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THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE 
THE BIBLE AND ITS BACKGROUND 
THE BIBLE AND THE GREEKS 
THE GOSPEL IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 
THE PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM 
ROMANS (IN THE MOFFATT NEW TESTA¬ 
MENT commentary) 

THE MEANING OF PAUL FOR TO-DAY 


THERE AND BACK AGAIN 




THE 

APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

AND ITS DEVELOPMENTS 

THREE LECTURES 

C. Hr DODD 

«• 

Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity in the 
University of Cambridge 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

ERNEST F. SCOTT 



Willett, Clark & Company 
Chicago New York 

1937 

do ^ *■ 


Copyright 1937 by 
WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY 


Manufactured in The U.S.A. by The Plimpton Press 
Norwood, Mass.-LaPorte, Ind. 

X>Sa5-4*5‘ 

dc>^' v j 


Published in Great Britain by 
Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd, 


. APR 11 1938 

©Cl A 11 5827 , 

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CONTENTS 


LECTURE I 

THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 1 

LECTURE II 

THE GOSPELS 53 

LECTURE III 

PAUL AND JOHN 93 

APPENDIX 

ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 135 


V 






INTRODUCTION 


It has been the aim of criticism for the last hun¬ 
dred years to distinguish the manifold varieties in 
New Testament thought. We have learned to 
recognize that there is no such thing as “ New 
Testament theology.” Each of the writers has 
his own theology. He interprets the faith from 
his own point of view, according to his own in¬ 
sight and experience. This knowledge we have 
gained of the breadth and freedom of New Tes¬ 
tament religion has done more perhaps than any¬ 
thing else to liberate us from the rigid orthodoxy 
which burdened, and too often stifled, the Chris¬ 
tian life of former generations. 

In our own time, however, the task of criti¬ 
cism is to discover the unity which underlies the 
diversity of New Testament thought. Those 

vii 


INTRODUCTION 


viii 

early teachers, however much they differed from 
one another, were inspired by a common faith. 
They were conscious that they were working 
together in the same enterprise and proclaiming 
the same message. What was this message? The 
older inquiry, with its emphasis on differences, 
has broken up the New Testament into so many 
pieces that no one can say definitely what it con¬ 
tains. Christianity, as presented by its first apos¬ 
tles, appears to be nothing but a bundle of separate 
creeds, out of which everyone may select the one 
that suits him, unless he prefers to make a new 
creed altogether which may still be covered by 
the vague term “ Christianity.” If the New Tes¬ 
tament is not to be emptied of all its authority we 
need to ask ourselves what it ultimately teaches 
as the Christian message. 

In the present book Professor Dodd makes a 
notable contribution toward answering this ques¬ 
tion. Not in any sentimental or theoretical way 
but by strictly critical methods he sets himself to 
examine what Christianity meant, alike for Peter 
and for Paul, for the Synoptic evangelists and for 
the profound theologian who gave us the Fourth 


INTRODUCTION 


IX 


Gospel. The theme of the book is thus a central 
one for our understanding not only of the New 
Testament but of the Christian religion; and it is 
handled with real insight and originality. Some 
of the author’s views, as he would himself be the 
first to acknowledge, will need to be modified in 
the light of further inquiry, but most impartial 
readers will find themselves compelled to accept 
his main conclusions. 

The publishers have done a real service in in¬ 
troducing the work of Professor Dodd to this 
country. He is admittedly one of the leaders in 
the younger school of theological studies in Eng¬ 
land. Fully in sympathy with the liberal move¬ 
ment in continental criticism he yet continues 
the English tradition of exact scholarship and 
balanced judgment. He realizes also, as the great 
English scholars have always done, that New 
Testament problems are not to be treated in a 
purely academic spirit. When all is said, the 
New Testament is the book of our religion, and 
the effort to interpret it historically must go hand 
in hand with the quest for its permanent religious 
values. Professor Dodd has written books which 


INTRODUCTION 


are more learned and elaborate than the present 
one, but perhaps none which is of more vital in¬ 
terest, and which expounds more clearly the gov¬ 
erning ideas in his New Testament work. 

E. F. Scott 


THE 

PRIMITIVE PREACHING 



I 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 

It pleased God,” says Paul, “ by the foolish- 
ness of the preaching to save them that believe ” 
(i Cor. i. 21). The word here translated 
“preaching,” kerygma , signifies not the action 
of the preacher, but that which he preaches, his 
“ message,” as we sometimes say. 

The New Testament writers draw a clear dis¬ 
tinction between preaching and teaching. The 
distinction is preserved alike in Gospels, Acts, 
Epistles, and Apocalypse, and must be consid¬ 
ered characteristic of early Christian usage in 
general. Teaching ( didaskein ) is in a large ma¬ 
jority of cases ethical instruction . 1 Occasionally 

1 Hence the title Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. The 
tractate so called gives instruction in Christian morals and eccle- 

i 


2 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


it seems to include what we should call apolo¬ 
getic, that is, the reasoned commendation of 
Christianity to persons interested but not yet 
convinced. Sometimes, especially in the Johan- 
nine writings, it includes the exposition of theo¬ 
logical doctrine. Preaching, on the other hand, 
is the public proclamation of Christianity to the 
non-Christian world. The verb keryssein prop¬ 
erly means “ to proclaim.” A keryx may be a 
town crier, an auctioneer, a herald, or anyone 
who lifts up his voice and claims public atten¬ 
tion for some definite thing he has to announce. 
Much of our preaching in church at the present 
day would not have been recognized by the early 
Christians as kerygma. It is teaching, or exhor¬ 
tation (paraklesis ), or it is what they called 
homilia , that is, the more or less informal dis¬ 
cussion of various aspects of Christian life and 
thought, addressed to a congregation already es¬ 
tablished in the faith. 

siastical practice. It is didache, not kerygma. It would there¬ 
fore be illegitimate to conclude that the church represented by 
this book was not interested in other aspects of Christianity. If 
it had issued a “Preaching of the Twelve Apostles,” it might 
have had a very different character. 



THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 3 

The verb “ to preach ” frequently has for its 
object “ the gospel.” Indeed, the connection of 
ideas is so close that keryssein by itself can be 
used as a virtual equivalent for evangelizesthai , 
“ to evangelize,” or “ to preach the gospel.” It 
would not be too much to say that wherever 
“ preaching ” is spoken of, it always carries with 
it the implication of “ good tidings ” proclaimed. 

For the early church, then, to preach the gos¬ 
pel was by no means the same thing as to deliver 
moral instruction or exhortation. While the 
church was concerned to hand on the teaching 
of the Lord, it was not by this that it made con¬ 
verts. It was by kerygma , says Paul, not by 
didache, that it pleased God to save men. 

We have to inquire how far it is possible 
to discover the actual content of the gospel 
preached or proclaimed by the apostles. 

First, we may place before us certain recur¬ 
rent phrases which indicate in brief the subject 
of the preaching. In the Synoptic Gospels we 
read of “preaching the kingdom of God,” 
whether the reference is to Jesus or to his fol¬ 
lowers. In the Pauline epistles we commonly 


4 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

read of “ preaching Christ.” In the Acts of the 
Apostles both forms of expression are used. The 
apostles preach “Jesus” or “Christ,” or they 
preach “ the kingdom of God.” We may ob¬ 
serve that in those parts of Acts where the writer 
speaks in the first person Paul himself is repre¬ 
sented as “preaching the kingdom of God.” 
We may therefore take it that a companion of 
Paul regarded his preaching as being just as much 
a proclamation of the kingdom of God as was 
the preaching of the first disciples or of their 
master, even though Paul does not himself speak 
of it in those terms. 

Such expressions obviously need a good deal 
of expansion before we can form a clear idea of 
what it was that the apostles actually preached. 
We must examine our documents more closely. 

The earliest Christian writer whose works are 
extant is the apostle Paul, and from him our in¬ 
vestigation should begin. There are, however, 
difficulties in attempting to discover the apos¬ 
tolic preaching in the epistles of Paul. 

In the first place, the epistles are, of course, 
not of the nature of kerygma. They are all ad- 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 5 

dressed to readers already Christian, and they 
deal with theological and ethical problems aris¬ 
ing out of the attempt to follow the Christian 
way of life and thought in a non-Christian 
world. They have the character of what the 
early church called “teaching” or “exhorta¬ 
tion.” They presuppose the preaching. They 
expound and defend the implications of the gos¬ 
pel rather than proclaim it. 

In the second place, if we should find it 
possible to infer from the epistles what Paul 
preached, it would be in the first instance what 
he calls “my gospel,” and not necessarily the 
gospel common to all or most early preachers. 
For Paul, as we know, claimed a high degree of 
originality in his presentation of the gospel, and 
the claim is clearly justified. 

Nevertheless, it is, I believe, by no means a 
hopeless task to discover in the Pauline epistles 
some indication at least of the character and con¬ 
tent of Paul’s preaching, and not only of his 
distinctive preaching, but of what he preached 
in common with other Christian missionaries. 

To begin with* Paul himself was conscious of 


6 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


a distinction between the fundamental content 
of the gospel and the teaching which he based 
upon it. In i Cor. i. 23, ii. 2-6, he recalls that 
at Corinth he had preached “ Christ and him cru¬ 
cified.” He would now like to go on to “ speak 
wisdom among mature persons,” and regrets that 
the Corinthians do not show themselves ready 
for it. 

Again, in 1 Cor. iii. 10 ff. he distinguishes be¬ 
tween the “ foundation ” which he laid, and the 
superstructure which he and others build upon 
it. The reference is no doubt to the “ building 
up ” of the life of the church in all its aspects. 
But a study of the context will show that what 
was most particularly in his mind was just this 
distinction between the fundamental gospel and 
the higher wisdom (not to be confused with 
44 the wisdom of men ”) which can be imparted 
to those whose apprehension of the gospel is suf¬ 
ficiently firm. The “ foundation ” is Christ, or, 
we may say, it is the gospel of “ Christ and him 
crucified.” Paul himself, Apollos, and others 
developed this fundamental gospel in various 
ways. The epistles represent for the most part 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 7 

this development, or superstructure. But Paul 
was well aware that what gave authority to his 
teaching was the gospel which underlay it all. 

In 1 Cor. xv. 1 ff. he cites in explicit terms that 
which he had preached at Corinth: “ That Christ 
died for our sins according to the Scriptures; 
and that he was buried; and that he rose again 
the third day according to the Scriptures; and 
that he was seen of Cephas. . . .” “It was 
thus,” he adds emphatically, “ that we preached 
and thus that you believed.” 

He then goes on to draw out certain implica¬ 
tions of these fundamental beliefs, part of which 
he describes as a “ mystery,” that is, surely, as 
belonging to that “ wisdom ” which should fol¬ 
low upon the apprehension of the preaching of 
“ Christ and him crucified.” We seem, there¬ 
fore, to have here, down to the very words, 
which he quotes in order that there may be no 
misunderstanding, a part at least of what Paul 
was accustomed to preach as gospel, clearly dis¬ 
tinguished from the theological superstructure 
of his thought: he proclaimed the facts that 
Christ died and rose again. As he puts it in 


8 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


writing to the Galatians (iii. i), Christ was 
“ openly set forth before their eyes as crucified.” 

These facts, however, are exhibited in a spe¬ 
cial light. They happened “according to the 
Scriptures” — a statement whose significance 
will become clearer presently. Further, Christ 
died “ for our sins.” In other words, according 
to Gal. i. 4, “ He gave himself for us, to rescue 
us from the present evil age.” As this statement 
occurs in the exordium of the epistle, where Paul 
may be supposed, according to his practice, to be 
recalling ideas familiar to his readers, we may 
take it that it was in some such terms that he 
spoke of the significance of the death of Christ 
when he preached in Galatia. The language im¬ 
plies the Jewish doctrine of the two ages, “ this 
age,” and “ the age to come.” 44 The entrances 
of this age have been made narrow and painful 
and toilsome, few and evil and full of dangers, 
and packed with great labors. For the entrances 
of the greater age are spacious and secure and 
bearing the fruit of immortality” (2 Esd. vii. 
12—r 3 ). Paul’s meaning is that by virtue of the 
death (and resurrection) of Christ the boundary 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 9 

between the two ages is crossed, and those who 
believe belong no more to the present evil age, 
but to the glorious age to come. 

Again, in Rom. x. 8-9, the content of “the 
word of faith which we preach ” is given in the 
terms: “That Jesus is Lord and that God has 
raised him from the dead.” Thus the proclama¬ 
tion of the resurrection is also a proclamation of 
the lordship of Christ. It is in this sense that it 
is “the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 
iv. 4). Indeed, the attainment of universal lord- 
ship was, according to Rom. xiv. 9, the very pur¬ 
pose of Christ’s death and resurrection: “ It was 
for this that Christ died and came to life, that 
he might exercise lordship over dead and living 
alike.” 

It is noteworthy that the passage just cited 
leads almost immediately to a reference to the 
judgment to come: “ We shall all stand before 
the tribunal of God” (Rom. xiv. 10) — which 
is also, according to 2 Cor. v. 10, “the tribunal 
of Christ.” We might fairly have inferred that 
there was in Paul’s mind a fixed association of 
ideas — resurrection, lordship, judgment — even 


io THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

if he had not explicitly stated that in his preach¬ 
ing of the gospel he proclaimed a “ day when 
God judges the secrets of men through Christ 
Jesus” (Rom. ii. 16). 

The kind of language he used in preaching 
judgment to come may be illustrated from i Cor. 
iv. 5: “Judge nothing before the time, until the 
Lord comes, who will bring to light the things 
that darkness hides, and expose the motives of 
hearts; then each person will receive his meed 
of praise from God”; and from 2 Cor. v. 10: 
“ We must all stand before the tribunal of Christ, 
that each may receive what pertains to him 
through his body, according to what he has done, 
whether good or evil.” It is to be observed that 
in these passages the fact of judgment to come is 
appealed to as a datum of faith. It is not some¬ 
thing for which Paul argues, but something from 
which he argues; something, therefore, which we 
may legitimately assume to have been a part of 
his fundamental preaching. Judgment is for 
Paul a function of the universal lordship of Christ 
which was attained through death and resurrec¬ 
tion, and Christ’s second advent as judge is a part 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING n 

of the kerygma — as judge, but also as savior, for 
in i Thess. i. 9-10 Paul sums up the effect of his 
preaching at Salonica in the terms: “ You turned 
from idols to God, to serve the living and real 
God, and to await his Son from heaven, whom 
he raised from the dead — Jesus, who saves us 
from the coming retribution.” 

The Pauline kerygma , therefore, is a proc¬ 
lamation of the facts of the death and resurrec¬ 
tion of Christ in an eschatological setting which 
gives significance to the facts. They mark the 
transition from “ this evil age ” to the “ age to 
come.” The “ age to come ” is the age of ful¬ 
fillment. Hence the importance of the state¬ 
ment that Christ died and rose “ according to the 
Scriptures.” Whatever events the Old Testa¬ 
ment prophets may indicate as impending, these 
events are for them significant as elements in the 
coming of “ the day of the Lord.” Thus the ful¬ 
fillment of prophecy means that the day of the 
Lord has dawned: the age to come has begun. 
The death and resurrection of Christ are the cru¬ 
cial fulfillment of prophecy. By virtue of them 
believers are already delivered out of this pres- 


i2 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

ent evil age. The new age is here, of which 
Christ, again by virtue of his death and resurrec¬ 
tion, is Lord. He will come to exercise his lord- 
ship both as judge and as savior at the consumma¬ 
tion of the age. 

We have now to ask how far this form of 
kerygma is distinctively Pauline, and how far it 
provides valid evidence for the apostolic preach¬ 
ing in general. 

Paul himself at least believed that in essentials 
his gospel was that of the primitive apostles; for 
although in Gal. i. 11—18 he states with emphasis 
that he did not derive it from any human source, 
nevertheless in the same epistle (ii. 2) he says 
that he laid “ the gospel which I preach ” before 
Peter, James, and John at Jerusalem, and that 
they gave their approval. Not only so, but in 
the locus classicus , 1 Cor. xv. 1 ff., he expressly 
declares that this summary of the gospel is what 
he had “ received ” as tradition; and after refer¬ 
ring to other witnesses to the facts, including 
Peter, James, and “ all the apostles,” he adds with 
emphasis, “ Whether I or they, it was thus that 
we preached, and thus that you believed.” 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 13 

Further, it should be remembered that in the 
epistle to the Romans, Paul is addressing a church 
which looked to other founders, and a church 
which he was anxious to conciliate. We may 
therefore take it that wherever in that epistle he 
appeals to the data of the Christian faith, he is 
referring to that which was common to him and 
to those preachers of the gospel to whom the 
church at Rome looked as founders and leaders. 
Those elements therefore of the kerygma , which 
we have already recognized in Romans, are to be 
regarded not only as parts of what Paul calls “ my 
gospel,” but as parts of the common gospel. 

Again, the opening verses of the epistle (i. 
1-4) have the aspect of a formula which Paul 
could assume as recognized by his readers. They 
speak of “the gospel of God which he an¬ 
nounced beforehand through his prophets in 
holy Scriptures.” This gospel concerned “ his 
Son, who was born of the seed of David accord¬ 
ing to the flesh; who was appointed Son of God 
with power according to the spirit of holiness 
from the time of the resurrection of the dead — 
Jesus Christ our Lord.” The language is unlike 


i 4 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

that of Paul in other places, but it sets forth sub¬ 
stantially the same idea of the resurrection — that 
it marks the attainment of Christ’s lordship, as 
Son of God with full powers. What is addi¬ 
tional is the affirmation of the Davidic descent of 
Jesus — a guarantee of his messianic status in 
which Paul does not seem to have been particu¬ 
larly interested, but which he cites here as part 
of a recognized formula. I should find it hard 
to believe that this Christological formula was 
coined by Paul himself. He accepts it as stat¬ 
ing the common gospel which he and others 
preached. 

Again, in Rom. viii. 31-34 the process of 
thought demands that the readers should accept 
as axiomatic the propositions that God “ did not 
spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us 
alland that “it is Christ Jesus, he who died, 
and more, who was raised, who is at the right 
hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” 

We have again the sense that a formula is 
being cited, a formula closely akin to that cited 
in 1 Cor. xv. 1 ff. It is to be noted that the idea 
of lordship is here expressed in the phrase “ at the 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 15 

right hand of God,” which recurs in Col. iii. 1, 
Eph. i. 20. As we shall see, this formula is deeply 
rooted in the kerygma , and is ultimately derived 
from Ps. cx. 1: “ The Lord said unto my Lord, 
Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine 
enemies thy footstool.” 

This text is cited in Mark xii. 36 (and the 
Synoptic parallels), and also (as a whole or in 
part) in Acts ii. 34-35, 1 Cor. xv. 25, Heb. i. 13, 
etc. Wherever we read of Christ being at the 
right hand of God, or of hostile powers being 
subjected to him, the ultimate reference is to this 
passage. In view of the place which Ps. cx. 1 
holds in the New Testament, we may safely put 
it down as one of the fundamental texts of the 
primitive kerygma . Indeed, I can see no ade¬ 
quate reason for rejecting the statement of Mark 
that it was first cited by Jesus himself in his 
public teaching in the temple. It follows that 
the use of the title “ Lord ” for Jesus is primi¬ 
tive. Since Bousset’s work, Kyrios Christos , it 
has been very widely held that this title was de¬ 
rived from Hellenistic usage, and first applied to 
Jesus in the gentile church. Seldom, I think, has 


16 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


a theory been so widely accepted on more flimsy 
grounds. 2 

We see emerging the outlines of an apostolic 
gospel which Paul believed to be common to 
himself and other Christian missionaries. As the 
epistles from which we have quoted belong to 
the fifties of the first century, they are evidence 
of prime value for the content of the early 
kerygma. And this evidence is in effect valid 
for a much earlier date than that at which the 
epistles themselves were written. When did 
Paul “receive” the tradition of the death and 
resurrection of Christ? His conversion can, on 
his own showing, be dated not later than about 
a.d. 3 3—34. 3 His first visit to Jerusalem was three 
years after this (possibly just over two years on 
our exclusive reckoning); at the utmost, there¬ 
fore, not more than seven years after the cruci- 

2 For an answer to Bousset’s theory see Burkitt, Christian 
Beginnings , pp. 44-52; Rawlinson, The New Testament Doc¬ 
trine of the Christ , pp. 231-67. This is not to deny the impor¬ 
tance of Hellenistic influence in helping to fix the connotation 
of the term as used in worship and in theology by Greek- 
speaking Christians. 

3 See my article on the “ Chronology of the Acts and the 
Pauline Epistles ” in the Oxford Helps to the Study of the Bible , 
1931, pp. 195-97. 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 17 

fixion. At that time he stayed with Peter for a 
fortnight, and we may presume they did not 
spend all the time talking about the weather. 
After that he had no direct contact with the 
primitive church for fourteen years, that is to 
say, almost down to the period to which our 
epistles belong, and it is difficult to see how he 
could during this time have had any opportunity 
of further instruction in the apostolic traditions. 

The date, therefore, at which Paul received 
the fundamentals of the gospel cannot well be 
later than some seven years after the death of 
Jesus Christ. It may be earlier, and indeed we 
must assume some knowledge of the tenets of 
Christianity in Paul even before his conversion. 
Thus Paul’s preaching represents a special stream 
of Christian tradition which was derived from 
the main stream at a point very near to its source. 
No doubt his own idiosyncrasy counted for 
much in his presentation of the gospel, but any¬ 
one who should maintain that the primitive 
Christian gospel was fundamentally different 
from that which we have found in Paul must 
bear the burden of proof. 


18 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

It is true that the kerygma as we have recov¬ 
ered it from the Pauline epistles is fragmentary. 
No complete statement of it is, in the nature of 
the case, available. But we may restore it in out¬ 
line somewhat after this fashion: 

(1) The prophecies are fulfilled, and the new 
age is inaugurated by the coming of Christ. 

(2) He was born of the seed of David. 

(3) He died according to the Scriptures, to 
deliver us out of the present evil age. 

(4) He was buried. 

(5) He rose on the third day according to the 
Scriptures. 

(6) He is exalted at the right hand of God as 
Son of God and Lord of quick and dead. 

(7) He will come again as judge and savior of 
men. 

The apostolic preaching as adopted by Paul 
may have contained, almost certainly did con¬ 
tain, more than this. Comparison with other 
forms of the kerygma may enable us to expand 
the outline with probability; but so much of its 
content can be demonstrated from the epistles, 
and the evidence they afford is of primary value. 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 19 

We now turn to another source of evidence, 
later than the Pauline epistles and ndt so direct, 
but yet of great importance — the account of the 
apostolic preaching in the Acts of the Apostles. 

The date of this work cannot be fixed closely, 
but it is perhaps more likely to belong to the 
nineties than to the eighties or seventies of the 
first century. The author apparently used to 
some extent the liberty which all ancient his¬ 
torians claimed (after the example of Thucyd¬ 
ides), of composing speeches which are put into 
the mouths of the personages of the story. We 
must therefore at the outset recognize the pos¬ 
sibility that the speeches attributed to Peter and 
others, as well as to Paul, may be free composi¬ 
tions of the author. 

But there are indications that the author of 
Acts used his historian’s privilege with consider¬ 
able restraint. Certainly in the first volume of 
his work, which we call the Gospel according to 
Luke, he can be proved to have kept closely to 
his sources in composing the discourses attrib¬ 
uted to Jesus Christ. And in Acts itself, consider 
the case of Paul’s two apologies — before the 


20 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


people (xxii. 1-21), and before Festus and 
Agrippa (xxvi. 2-23). They give different ac¬ 
counts of his conversion, both differing from the 
account of the event given by the historian him¬ 
self in chapter nine. Why should a writer who 
elsewhere shows himself to be not indifferent 
to economy of space and the avoidance of rep¬ 
etition have been at the pains of composing, 
independently, three different accounts of the 
same event? In the Third Gospel the occasional 
occurrence of “doublets” is reasonably ac¬ 
counted for by the hypothesis of various sources. 
Is it not most natural to conclude that in the case 
before us the author based the two speeches upon 
sources different from that which he followed in 
chapter nine? And if so, is any source more 
likely than some direct or indirect report of the 
line which Paul himself followed upon these or 
similar occasions? 

Again, the speech of Paul to the elders of the 
Ephesian church in xx. 18-35 contains so many 
echoes of the language of Pauline epistles that 
we must suppose either that the writer had ac¬ 
cess to these epistles (which is on other grounds 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 21 


improbable), or that he worked upon actual rem¬ 
iniscence of Paul’s speech upon this or some 
similar occasion. And when we observe that this 
speech occurs in close proximity to “ we ’’-pas¬ 
sages, it is reasonable to suppose that the traveling 
companion who was responsible for these pas¬ 
sages, whether or not he was also the author of 
the whole work, remembered in general lines 
what Paul said. We conclude that in some cases 
at least the author of Acts gives us speeches which 
are not, indeed, anything like verbatim reports 
(for the style is too Lucan and too un-Pauline 
for that), but are based upon a reminiscence of 
what the apostle actually said. 

It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that 
in the speeches given in the earlier part of Acts 
the author may have similarly made use of 
sources. This becomes the more probable in 
view of the following facts. 

(1) Negatively, there are few, if any, ideas 
or expressions introduced which might arouse 
suspicion because of their resemblance to writ¬ 
ings emanating, like the Acts, from the gentile 
church in the late first century; nor are there 


22 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

any echoes, even in turns of speech, of the dis¬ 
tinctively Pauline theology, though the author, 
whoever he may have been, must have been 
associated with the Pauline wing of the church. 4 
To suppose that this is due to deliberate archaism 
is to attribute to the author of Acts a modem 
view of historical writing. 

(2) Positively, the speeches in question, as 
well as parts of the narrative in which they are 
embedded, have been shown to contain a large 
element of Semitism. Nor is this Hebraism of 
the kind which results from an imitation of the 


4 The argument here is in danger of moving in a circle; for 
I shall presently show that there are parallels between these 
speeches and the epistles of Paul, and that these are not due to 
borrowing from Paul. But I think it is legitimate to point out, 
in reply to the view that the speeches in the early part of Acts 
are late compositions, that there is nothing in them which sug¬ 
gests that which is distinctive of Paul. This is not true of other 
parts of Acts. E.g., the phrase “ the Spirit of Jesus ” in Acts 
xvi. 7 is unique in the N.T., but is only a slight modification of 
the expression, “ the Spirit of Jesus Christ,” which is not only 
peculiar to Paul, but is the product of his distinctive doctrine 
of the Spirit. Similarly in Acts xiii. 39, we have the character¬ 
istic Pauline term “ justification,” and in Acts xx. 28, the chief 
ministers of the local church are called “ bishops,” a term which 
is otherwise applied to them only by Paul or his imitators (Phil, 
i. 1, 1 Tim. iii. 2, Tit. i. 7). No Pauline influence of this kind 
can be alleged against the earlier speeches. 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 23 

translation-Greek of the Septuagint, and which 
can be traced in other parts of the Lucan work. 
It can be shown to be Aramaism, of a kind similar 
to that which we recognize in the report of the 
sayings of Jesus in the Gospels. There is there¬ 
fore a high degree of probability that the author 
was drawing from an Aramaic source or sources, 
whether written or oral, and whether the work 
of translation had already been done, or whether 
he translated it for himself. 5 

In short, there is good reason to suppose that 
the speeches attributed to Peter in the Acts are 
based upon material which proceeded from the 
Aramaic-speaking church at Jerusalem, and was 

6 See Torrey, Composition and Date of Acts. De Zwaan, 
in The Beginnings of Christianity , edited by Jackson and Lake, 
Part I, vol. ii, has subjected Torrey’s theory to searching ex¬ 
amination, and concludes that the evidence for Aramaism is 
strong for Acts i. i-v. 16, ix. 31-xi. 18, quite doubtful for v. 17- 
ix. 30, xi. 19-xiv. 28, and somewhat less doubtful for xv. 1-36. 
All the speeches which concern us here, with the exception of 
v. 29-32, fall within those sections in which the evidence for 
Aramaism is strong, and for myself I cannot resist the conclu¬ 
sion that the material here presented existed in some form in 
Aramaic before it was incorporated in our Greek Acts. Ac¬ 
cording to Torrey, there are some examples of mistranslation 
which would be natural in one whose knowledge of Aramaic 
had been acquired at Antioch, and who was not well acquainted 
with the southern Aramaic of Palestine. 


24 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

substantially earlier than the period at which the 
book was written. 

We may begin with the speeches in Acts ii-iv. 
There are four in all. The first two (ii. 14-36, 
38-39) are supposed to have been delivered by 
Peter to the multitude assembled on the day of 
Pentecost, the third (iii. 12-26) to the people 
after the healing of a lame man, and the fourth 
(iv. 8-12) to the Sanhedrin after the arrest of 
the apostles. The second account of the arrest 
in v. 17-40 is probably a doublet from another 
source, and it does not betray the same traces of 
Aramaism. The speech said to have been de¬ 
livered on this occasion (v. 29-32) does no more 
than recapitulate briefly the substance of the 
previous speeches. The speech of Peter to Cor¬ 
nelius in x. 34-43 is akin to the earlier speeches, 
but has some special features, and in it the evi¬ 
dence for an Aramaic original is at its strongest. 

We may with some confidence take these 
speeches to represent, not indeed what Peter 
said upon this or that occasion, but the kerygma 
of the church at Jerusalem at an early period. 

The first four speeches of Peter cover sub- 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 25 

stantially the same ground. The phraseology 
and the order of presentation vary slightly, but 
there is no essential advance from one to another. 
They supplement one another, and taken to¬ 
gether they afford a comprehensive view of the 
content of the early kerygma. This may be 
summarized as follows: 

First, the age of fulfillment has dawned. 
“ This is that which was spoken by the prophet ” 
(Acts ii. 16). “The things which God fore¬ 
showed by the mouth of all the prophets, he thus 
fulfilled ” (iii. 18). “All the prophets from 
Samuel and his successors told of these days ” (iii. 
24). It was a standing principle of rabbinic exe¬ 
gesis of the Old Testament that what the proph¬ 
ets predicted had reference to the “ days of the 
Messiah,” that is to say, to the expected time 
when God, after long centuries of waiting, 
should visit his people with judgment and bless¬ 
ing, bringing to a climax his dealings with them 
in history. The apostles, then, declare that the 
messianic age has dawned. 

Second, this has taken place through the minis¬ 
try, death, and resurrection of Jesus, of which 


26 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

a brief account is given, with proof from the 
Scriptures that all took place through “ the deter¬ 
minate counsel and foreknowledge of God”: 
(i) His Davidic descent. “David, being a 
prophet, and knowing that God had sworn to set 
one of the fruit of his loins upon his throne, fore¬ 
saw [Christ],” who is therefore proclaimed, by 
implication, to have been born “ of the seed of 
David” (ii. 30-31, citing Ps. cxxxii. 11). (2) 

His ministry. “Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
divinely accredited to you by works of power, 
prodigies, and signs which God did through him 
among you” (Acts ii. 22). “Moses said, The 
Lord your God will raise up a prophet like me; 
him you must hear in everything that he may say 
to you” (Acts iii. 22, apparently regarded as 
fulfilled in the preaching and teaching of Jesus). 
(3) His death. “He was delivered up by the 
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, 
and you, by the agency of men without the law, 
killed him by crucifixion” (ii. 23). “You 
caused him to be arrested, and denied him before 
Pilate, when he had decided to acquit him. You 
denied the holy and righteous one, and asked for 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 27 

a murderer to be granted to you, while you 
killed the Prince of Life ” (hi. 13-14). (4) His 
resurrection. “ God raised him up, having loosed 
the pangs of death, because it was not possible 
for him to be held by it. For David says with 
reference to him, 4 Thou wilt not leave my soul 
in Hades, nor give thy holy one to see corrup¬ 
tion ’ ” (ii. 24-31). “ God raised him from the 
dead, whereof we are witnesses” (iii. 15). 
“ Jesus of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom 
God raised from the dead ” (iv. 10). 

Third, by virtue of the resurrection Jesus has 
been exalted at the right hand of God as messianic 
head of the new Israel. “ Being exalted at the 
right hand of God [according to Ps. cx. 1], . . . 
God has made him Lord and Christ ” (ii. 3 3-36). 
“ The God of our fathers has glorified his servant 
Jesus” (iii. 13). “He is the stone which was 
rejected by you builders, and has become the 
top of the corner ” (iv. 11, citing Ps. cxviii. 22). 
Compare “ God exalted him at his right hand, 
as prince and savior ” (v. 31). 

Fourth, the Holy Spirit in the church is the 
sign of Christ’s present power and glory. 


28 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

“Being exalted at the right hand of God, and 
having received the promise of the Holy Spirit 
from the Father, he poured out this which you 
see and hear” (Acts ii. 33). This is docu¬ 
mented from Joel ii. 28-32 (Acts ii. 17-21). 
Compare “We are witnesses of these things, 
and so is the Holy Spirit which God has given to 
those who obey him ” (v. 32). 

Fifth, the messianic age will shortly reach its 
consummation in the return of Christ. “ That 
he may send the Messiah appointed beforehand 
for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until 
the times of the restoration of all things, of which 
God spoke through the mouth of his prophets 
from of old ” (iii. 21). This is the only passage 
in Acts i-iv which speaks of the second advent of 
Christ. In Acts x. 42 this part of the kerygma is 
presented in these terms: “This is he who is 
appointed by God as judge of living and dead.” 
There is no other explicit reference to Christ as 
judge in these speeches. 

Finally, the kerygma always closes with an 
appeal for repentance, the offer of forgiveness 
and of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of “ sal¬ 
vation,” that is, of “ the life of the age to come,” 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 29 

to those who enter the elect community. “ Re¬ 
pent and be baptized, each of you, upon the 
name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your 
sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy 
Spirit. For the promise is for you and your 
children, and for all those far off, whom the Lord 
your God may call” (Acts ii. 38-39, referring 
to Joel ii. 32, Is. lvii. 19). “Repent therefore 
and be converted for the blotting out of your 
sins. . . . You are the sons of the prophets and 
of the covenant which God made with your 
fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in thy seed 
shall all families of the earth be blessed.’ For you 
in the first place God raised up his servant Jesus 
and sent him to bless you by turning each of you 
away from your sins ” (Acts iii. 19, 25-26, citing 
Gen. xii. 3). “ In no other is there salvation, for 
there is no other name under heaven given 
among men by which you must be saved ” (Acts 
iv. 12). Compare “ God exalted him at his right 
hand as prince and savior, to give repentance to 
Israel, and remission of sins ” (Acts v. 31);“ To 
him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone 
who believes in him shall receive remission of 
sins through his name ” (Acts x. 43). 


3 o THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

We may take it that this is what the author of 
Acts meant by “preaching the kingdom of 
God.” It is very significant that it follows the 
lines of the summary of the preaching of Jesus as 
given in Mark i. 14-15: “Jesus came into Gali¬ 
lee preaching the gospel of God, and saying, 
‘ The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God 
has drawn near; repent and believe the gospel.’ ” 
This summary provides the framework within 
which the Jerusalem kerygma is set. 

The first clause, “ The time is fulfilled,” is ex¬ 
panded in the reference to prophecy and its ful¬ 
fillment. The second clause, “The kingdom 
of God has drawn near,” is expanded in the 
account of the ministry and death of Jesus, his 
resurrection and exaltation, all conceived as an 
eschatological process. The third clause, “ Re¬ 
pent and believe the gospel,” reappears in the 
appeal for repentance and the offer of forgive¬ 
ness with which the apostolic kerygma closes. 
Whether we say that the apostolic preaching was 
modeled on that of Jesus, or that the evangelist 
formulated his summary of the preaching of 
Jesus on the model of that of the primitive 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 31 

church, at any rate the two are identical in pur¬ 
port. The kingdom of God is conceived as 
coming in the events of the life, death, and resur¬ 
rection of Jesus, and to proclaim these facts, in 
their proper setting, is to preach the gospel of 
the kingdom of God. 

It is clear, then, that we have here, as in the 
preaching which we found to lie behind the 
Pauline epistles, a proclamation of the death and 
resurrection of Jesus Christ in an eschatological 
setting from which those facts derive their saving 
significance. We may proceed to compare the 
two versions of the kerygma , in Paul and in the 
Acts respectively. 

There are three points in the Pauline kerygma 
which do not directly appear in the Jerusalem 
kerygma of Acts: 

(1) Jesus is not there called “Son of God.” 
His titles are taken rather from the prophecies of 
Deutero-Isaiah. He is the holy and righteous 
“ Servant ” of God. It is noteworthy that the 
first person who is said in Acts to have “ preached 
Jesus, that he is the Son of God ” is Paul himself 
(ix. 20). It may be that this represents an actual 


32 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

difference of terminology. Yet the idea that 
Jesus, as Messiah, is Son of God is deeply embed¬ 
ded in the Synoptic Gospels, whose sources were 
in all probability not subject to Pauline influ¬ 
ence; and the Christological formula in Rom. i. 
1-4 is, as we have seen, probably not Pauline in 
origin. The phrase “ Son of God with power ” 
there carries much the same ideas as the phrase 
“ Lord and Christ ” in the Jerusalem kerygma , 
for its significance is messianic rather than prop¬ 
erly theological. 

(2) The Jerusalem kerygma does not assert 
that Christ died for our sins. The result of the 
life, death, and resurrection of Christ is the for¬ 
giveness of sins, but this forgiveness is not specif¬ 
ically connected with his death. Since, how¬ 
ever, Paul includes this statement in that which 
he “ received,” we may hesitate to ascribe to him 
the origin of the idea. Since the Jerusalem 
kerygma applies to Christ the Isaianic title of 
“ Servant,” the way was at least open to interpret 
his death on the lines of Isaiah liii. Acts viii. 3 2- 
3 5 may suggest the possibility that this step was 
taken explicitly by the school of Stephen and 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 33 

Philip, with which Paul appears to have been 
in touch. 

(3) The Jerusalem kerygma does not assert 
that the exalted Christ intercedes for us. It may 
be that in Rom. viii. 34 Paul has inserted this on 
his own account into the apostolic formula. But, 
on the other hand, the idea occurs also in He¬ 
brews vii. 2 5 and seems to be implied in Matt. x. 
32, so that it may not be of Pauline origin. It is 
perhaps, in effect, another way of saying that 
forgiveness is offered “ in his name.” 

For the rest, all the points of the Pauline 
preaching reappear: the Davidic descent of 
Jesus, guaranteeing his qualification for messiah- 
ship; his death according to the Scriptures; his 
resurrection according to the Scriptures; his con¬ 
sequent exaltation to the right hand of God as 
Lord and Christ; his deliverance of men from sin 
into new life; and his return to consummate the 
new age. This coincidence between the apos¬ 
tolic preaching as attested by the speeches in 
Acts, and as attested by Paul, enables us to carry 
back its essential elements to a date far earlier 
than a critical analysis of Acts by itself could 


34 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

justify; for, as we have seen, Paul must have re¬ 
ceived the tradition very soon after the death of 
Jesus. 

With this in view, we may usefully draw at¬ 
tention to other points in the Jerusalem kerygma 
which reappear in the epistles of Paul, though he 
does not explicitly include them in his “ gospel.” 

The kerygma in Acts lays emphasis upon the 
Holy Spirit in the church as the sign that the 
new age of fulfillment has begun. The idea of 
the Spirit in the church is very prominent in 
the Pauline epistles. We are now justified in 
concluding that this was no innovation of his, but 
represents a part of the tradition he had received. 
It is to be observed that in Gal. iii. 2 Paul appeals 
to the evidence of the Spirit in the church as a 
datum from which he may argue regarding the 
nature and conditions of salvation in Christ, and 
on this basis he develops his doctrine of the Spirit 
as the “ earnest,” or first instalment, of the con¬ 
summated life of the age to come (2 Cor. i. 22, 
v. 5; Eph. i. 13-14). This is true to the implica¬ 
tions of the kerygma as we have it in Acts. 

Again, the “ calling ” and “ election ” of the 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 35 

church as the “ Israel of God ” can now be seen 
to be no peculiarity of Pauline teaching. It is 
implied in such passages of the kerygma as Acts 
iii. 25-26, ii. 39. 

There is, indeed, very little in the Jerusalem 
kerygma which does not appear, substantially, in 
Paul. But there is one important element which 
at first sight at least is absent from his preaching, 
so far as we can recover it from the epistles, 
namely, the explicit reference to the ministry of 
Jesus, his miracles (Acts ii. 22) and teaching 
(Acts iii. 22). Such references are only slight 
in the first four speeches of Peter, to which we 
have so far given most attention. But the case 
is different in the speech attributed to Peter in 
Acts x. 34-43. The principal elements of the 
kerygma can be traced in this speech — the ful¬ 
fillment of prophecy, the death and resurrection 
of Christ, his second advent, and the offer of 
forgiveness. But all is given with extreme 
brevity, except the section dealing with the his¬ 
torical facts concerning Jesus. These are here 
treated in fairly full outline. 

The Greek of x. 35-38 is notoriously rough 


36 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

and ungrammatical, and indeed scarcely trans¬ 
latable, though the general meaning is clear. 
This is strange in so excellent a Greek writer as 
the author of Acts. In some MSS. it has been 
improved. But Dr. Torrey has shown that if 
the text in its more difficult form (which on gen¬ 
eral principles of textual criticism is likely to be 
more original) be translated word for word into 
Aramaic, it becomes both grammatical and per¬ 
spicuous. The case, therefore, for regarding the 
passage as a translation is strong. I shall here 
follow Dr. Torrey and give the passage after his 
restored Aramaic, being convinced that by doing 
so we shall come nearer to the original form. 

“ As for the word which he, the Lord of all, 
sent to the children of Israel, preaching the gospel 
of peace through Jesus the Messiah, you know 
the thing [literally, ‘ the word ’] that happened 
through all Judea, beginning from Galilee after 
the baptism which John preached; that God 
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with Holy Spirit and 
power; and he went about doing good and heal¬ 
ing all who were oppressed by the devil, because 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 37 

God was with him. And we are witnesses of all 
that he did in the country of the Jews and Jeru¬ 
salem. Him they killed by hanging him upon a 
tree. God raised him up on the third day, and 
permitted him to be manifest, not to all people, 
but to witnesses chosen beforehand by God, 
namely to us, who ate and drank with him after 
he rose from the dead.” 

It is to be observed that the first clause, “ the 
word which he sent to the children of Israel, 
preaching the gospel of peace through Jesus 
Christ,” which forms a sort of heading to the 
whole, is a virtual equivalent of the term 
“ kerygma ” or “ gospel.” The passage is there¬ 
fore offered explicitly as a form of apostolic 
preaching. It is represented as being delivered 
by Peter to a gentile audience. It is quite intel¬ 
ligible in the situation presupposed that some 
account of the ministry of Jesus should have been 
called for when the gospel was taken to people 
who could not be acquainted, as the Jews of 
Judea were, with the main facts. We may per¬ 
haps take it that the speech before Cornelius 


38 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

represents the form of kerygma used by the 
primitive church in its earliest approaches to a 
wider public. 

In the preaching attested by Paul, although it 
was similarly addressed to the wider public, there 
does not seem to be any such comprehensive 
summary of the facts of the ministry of Jesus, as 
distinct from the facts of his death and resur¬ 
rection. It would, however, be rash to argue 
from silence that Paul completely ignored the 
life of Jesus in his preaching ; for, as we have seen, 
that preaching is represented only fragmentarily, 
and as it were accidentally, in the epistles. That 
he was aware of the historical life of Jesus and 
cited his sayings as authoritative need not be 
shown over again. It may be, for all we know, 
that the brief recital of historical facts in i Cor. 
xv. i if. is only the conclusion of a general sum¬ 
mary which may have included some reference 
to the ministry. But this remains uncertain. 

According to Acts, Paul did preach in terms 
closely similar to those of the Petrine kerygma of 
Acts x. The speech said to have been delivered 
by Paul at Pisidian Antioch (Acts xiii. 16-41) 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 39 

is too long to be quoted here in full, but the gist 
of it is as follows: 

God brought Israel out of Egypt, and gave 
them David for their king. Of the seed of David 
Jesus has come as savior. He was heralded by 
John the Baptist. His disciples followed him 
from Galilee to Jerusalem. There he was 
brought to trial by the rulers of the Jews before 
Pilate, who reluctantly condemned him. He 
died according to the Scriptures, and was buried. 
God raised him from the dead, according to the 
Scriptures, and he was seen by witnesses. 
Through him forgiveness and justification are 
offered. Therefore take heed. 

This is obviously of the same stuff as the 
kerygma in the early chapters of Acts. It may 
be compared on the one hand with the speeches 
in Acts ii-iv, and on the other hand with the 
speech in Acts x. It is a mixture of the two types. 
In particular, its historical data are fuller than 
those of Acts ii-iv, but less full than those of Acts 
x, containing no allusions to the baptism of Jesus 
or his miracles in Galilee. There is nothing 


4 o THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

specifically Pauline in it, except the term “ justi¬ 
fication.’’ On the other hand, the general scheme 
and the emphasis correspond with what we have 
found in the epistles, and there is little or nothing 
in it which could not be documented out of the 
epistles, except the historical details in the intro¬ 
ductory passage (xiii. 16-22) and the specific 
allusions to episodes in the gospel story, and in 
particular to the ministry of John the Baptist (the 
fullest account in the New Testament outside 
the Gospels) and the trial before Pilate. 

That these two episodes did not fall wholly 
outside the range of Paul’s interest might per¬ 
haps be argued on the following grounds: 

(1) Paul refers in his epistles to Apollos as 
one whom he would regard as a fellow worker, 
though others set him up as a rival. Now, ac¬ 
cording to Acts, Apollos had been a follower 
of John the Baptist. Paul therefore must have 
had occasion to relate the work of the Baptist to 
the Christian faith. 

(2) In 1 Tim. vi. 13 we have an allusion to 
Christ’s “ confession before Pontius Pilate.” 
Although we should probably not accept 1 Tim- 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 41 

othy as an authentic Pauline letter, yet it no 
doubt represents the standpoint of the Pauline 
circle, and the allusion to Pilate may have been 
derived from Paul’s preaching. 

These observations are far from proving that 
Paul would have included such references to John 
the Baptist and to the trial before Pilate in his 
preaching, but they show that it is not impos¬ 
sible that he may have done so, in spite of the 
silence of his epistles. In any case, if we recall 
the close general similarity of the kerygma as 
derived from the Pauline epistles to the kerygma 
as derived from Acts, as well as Paul’s emphatic 
assertion of the identity of his gospel with the 
general Christian tradition, we shall not find it 
altogether incredible that the speech at Pisidian 
Antioch may represent in a general way one form 
of Paul’s preaching, that form, perhaps, which he 
adopted in synagogues when he had the oppor¬ 
tunity of speaking there. If that is so, then we 
must say that he, like other early Christian 
preachers, gave a place in his preaching to some 
kind of recital of the facts of the life and ministry 
of Jesus. 


42 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

If he did not do so, then we must say that in 
this respect he departed from the common model 
of apostolic preaching. For it seems clear that 
within the general scheme of the kerygma was 
included some reference, however brief, to the 
historical facts of the life of Jesus. These facts 
fall within the eschatological setting of the whole, 
no less than the facts of his death and resurrec¬ 
tion. They are themselves eschatological events, 
in the sense that they form part of the process by 
which God’s purpose reaches fulfillment and 
his kingdom comes. 

A comparison, then, of the Pauline epistles 
with the speeches in Acts leads to a fairly clear 
and certain outline sketch of the preaching of 
the apostles. That it is primitive in the strictest 
sense does not necessarily follow. In one respect 
it appears that even within a very few years the 
perspective of the kerygma must have altered in 
respect of the relation conceived to exist between 
the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ 
on the one hand, and his second advent on the 
other. 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 43 

It is remarkable that the expectation of a very 
early advent persisted so long in the church. 
Even in so late a writing as the first epistle of 
John (ii. 18) the belief is expressed that this is 
“the last hour.” The appendix to the Fourth 
Gospel is evidence that so long as one survivor 
of the generation of the apostles remained, the 
church clung to the belief that during his life¬ 
time the Lord would come (John xxi. 20-23). 
The expectation of a speedy advent must have 
had extraordinarily deep roots in Christian belief. 

When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in a.d. 
50 he clearly expected it very soon indeed, and 
the qualifications he introduces in 2 Thessalo¬ 
nians seem to have been of the nature of an after¬ 
thought of which he had said nothing in his 
preaching. It is clearly the result of reflection 
upon the fact that the advent had been unex¬ 
pectedly delayed. His first preaching had left 
the Thessalonians completely surprised and be¬ 
wildered when certain of their fellows died and 
yet the Lord had not come. If Paul preached in 
these terms at least twenty years after the begin- 


44 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

ning of the church, we may suppose that the 
announcement of a very speedy advent was even 
more emphatic at an earlier date. 

In the Jerusalem kerygma there is an equal 
sense of immediacy. It seems to be implied in 
Acts iii. 19-20 that the repentance of Israel in 
response to the appeal of the apostles will im¬ 
mediately be followed by “ times of refreshing,” 
by the return of Christ, and by the “ restoration 
of all things.” And here again we may recall 
that, early as the source may be, the passage in 
question was not written down until much 
water had flowed under the bridge. 

What was the attitude of the apostles at the 
beginning ? We must remember that the early 
church handed down as a saying of the Lord, 
“The kingdom of God has come upon you” 
(Matt. xii. 28, Luke xi. 20). This means that 
the great divine event, the eschaton , has already 
entered history. In agreement with this, the 
preaching both of Paul and of the Jerusalem 
church affirms that the decisive thing has already 
happened. The prophecies are fulfilled; God 
has shown his “mighty works”; the Messiah 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 45 

has come; he has been exalted to the right hand 
of God; he has given the Spirit which according 
to the prophets should come “ in the last days.” 
Thus all that remains is the completion of that 
which is already in being. It is not to introduce a 
new order of things that the Lord will come; it is 
only to finish his work. The church believed 
that the Lord had said, “ You will see the Son of 
Man seated on the right hand of the Power and 
coming with the clouds of heaven ” (Mark xiv. 
62). One part of the vision was fulfilled: by the 
eye of faith they already saw him on the right 
hand of God. Why should the conclusion of 
the vision delay? 

The more we try to penetrate in imagination 
to the state of mind of the first Christians in the 
earliest days, the more are we driven to think of 
resurrection, exaltation, and second advent as 
being, in their belief, inseparable parts of a single 
divine event. It was not an early advent that 
they proclaimed, but an immediate advent. 
They proclaimed it not so much as a future 
event for which men should prepare by repent¬ 
ance, but rather as the impending corroboration 


46 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

of a present fact: the new age is already here, and 
because it is here men should repent. The proof 
that it was here was found in the actual presence 
of the Spirit, that is, of the supernatural in the 
experience of men. It was in a supernatural 
world that the apostles felt themselves to be liv¬ 
ing; a world therefore in which it was natural that 
any day the Lord might be seen upon the clouds 
of heaven. That was what their Lord had meant, 
they thought, by saying, “ The kingdom of God 
has come upon you,” while he also bade them 
pray, “ Thy kingdom come.” 

It is to be observed that the apostolic preach¬ 
ing as recorded in Acts does not (contrary to a 
commonly held opinion) lay the greatest stress 
upon the expectation of a second advent of the 
Lord. It is only in Acts iii. 20-21 that this ex¬ 
pectation is explicitly and fully set forth, and 
only in Acts x. 42 that Christ is described as judge 
of quick and dead. The speeches of Acts ii, iv, 
and v, as well as the professedly Pauline speech of 
Acts xiii, contain no explicit reference to it. 
That it is implied in the whole kerygma is true, 
but the emphasis does not lie there. The main 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 47 

burden of the kerygma is that the unprecedented 
has happened: God has visited and redeemed his 
people. 

This conviction persists as fundamental to 
Christian belief through all changes in the whole 
of the New Testament. Paul speaks of the 
“ new creation ” which has taken place when a 
man is “ in Christ ” (2 Cor. v. 16). He says that 
God has already “ rescued us out of the domain 
of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom 
of the Son of his love ” (Col. i. 13). The epistle 
to the Hebrews says that Christians have “ tasted 
the powers of the age to come ” (vi. 6). First 
Peter says that Christians have been “ born again ” 
(i. 3, 23). So does the Fourth Gospel (iii. 3). 
It needs only a slight acquaintance with the 
traditional Jewish eschatology to recognize that 
these writers are all using language which implies 
that the eschaton , the final and decisive act of 
God, has already entered human experience. 

This is surely primitive. In the earliest days 
it was possible to hold this conviction in the in¬ 
divisible unity of an experience which included 
also the expectation of an immediate overt con- 


48 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

firmation of its truth. The great act of God had 
already passed through the stages of the sending 
of the Messiah, his miraculous works and author¬ 
itative teaching, his death (according to the 
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God), 
his resurrection, and his exaltation to the right 
hand of God. It now trembled upon the verge 
of its conclusion in his second advent. 

As time went on, the indivisible unity of ex¬ 
perience which lay behind the preaching of the 
apostles was broken. The Lord did not come 
on the clouds. For all their conviction of living 
in an age of miracle, the apostles found them¬ 
selves living in a world which went on its course, 
outside the limits of the Christian community, 
much as it had always done. The tremendous 
crisis in which they had felt themselves to be 
living passed without reaching its expected issue. 
The second advent of the Lord, which had 
seemed to be impending as the completion of 
that which they had already “ seen and heard,” 
came to appear as a second crisis yet in the future. 
So soon as only a few years had passed, say three 
or four, this division in the originally indivisible 


THE PRIMITIVE PREACHING 49 

experience must have insensibly taken place in 
their minds, for they were intercalary years, so to 
speak, not provided for in their first calendar of 
the divine purpose. The consequent demand for 
readjustment was a principal cause of the de¬ 
velopment of early Christian thought. 





THE GOSPELS 



II 

THE GOSPELS 


T 

JL HE 


he preaching of the primitive church had, 
as we have seen, an eschatological setting. Its 
terms were borrowed from the traditional escha¬ 
tology of Judaism. But it differed from all 
earlier prophecy and apocalypse in declaring that 
the eschatological process was already in being. 
The kingdom of God had made its appearance 
with the coming of the Messiah; his works of 
power and his “ new teaching with authority ” 
had provided evidence of the presence of God 
among men; his death “ according to the deter¬ 
minate counsel and foreknowledge of God ” had 
marked the end of the old order, and his resurrec- 

53 


54 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

tion and exaltation had definitely inaugurated 
the new age, characterized, as the prophets had 
foretold, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit 
upon the people of God. It remained only for 
the new order to be consummated by the return 
of Christ in glory to judge the quick and the dead 
and to save his own from the wrath to come. 
The whole was conceived as a continuous, 
divinely directed process, in which past, present, 
and future alike had eschatological significance. 
In the recent past lay the ministry, death, and 
resurrection of Jesus Christ; the experience of 
the present attested his power in the church 
through the Spirit; the near future would bring 
the final revelation of the meaning of the whole. 

When the unexpected delay in the consum¬ 
mation broke up the continuity of the eschato¬ 
logical process, some readjustment of outlook 
was called for. The lines along which it took 
place depended upon the relative emphasis placed 
upon the past, the present, or the future aspect 
of the primitive gospel. 

For some minds, the most intense emotion 


THE GOSPELS 


55 

gathered about the thought of the expected 
advent of the Lord. The finished work of Christ, 
and its results in the present experience of the 
church, existed in the mind as a permanent back¬ 
ground of faith, producing that atmosphere of 
“ joy and simplicity of heart ” which the author 
of Acts (ii. 46) notes as characteristic of the early 
days. But all this was, after all, in some sort pro¬ 
visional and incomplete; it was preparatory to the 
glory yet to be revealed when the Lord should 
return on the clouds of heaven. 

As the revelation still delayed, the believers 
were driven to conclude that they had been mis¬ 
taken in thinking that the Lord would return 
immediately, but a more attentive study of his 
teaching, and observation of the signs of the 
times, they thought, would enable them to divine 
the time of his coming, as well as the reason for its 
delay. The church therefore proceeded to re¬ 
construct on a modified plan the traditional 
scheme of Jewish eschatology which had been 
broken up by the declaration that the kingdom 
of God had already come. Materials for such 


5 6 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

a reconstruction were present in profusion in the 
apocalyptic literature. The reconstructed es¬ 
chatology of the church therefore drew heavily 
on Jewish sources.. 

The earliest document of this tendency is to 
be found in 2 Thessalonians. The eschatological 
passage in the first chapter of that epistle (7-10), 
which most critics have noted as being in style 
unlike that of Paul, is best understood as a virtual 
quotation of some current apocalypse, whether 
Jewish or Jewish-Christian. There is nothing 
distinctively Christian either in its contents or 
in its general tone, apart from the fact that the 
figure of the Messiah is identified with Jesus. In 
the second chapter (3-10) we have a peculiar 
doctrine which may have been contained in the 
same apocalypse. It is clearly an adaptation of 
the ancient myth of Antichrist or Beliar, who 
now appears in the guise of the “ Man of Sin.” 
Clearly the motive underlying it is the problem, 
Why has the Lord not yet come? The answer is 
that his coming must be preceded, as ancient 
apocalypses had foretold, by the outbreak of 
final anarchy, and this outbreak is delayed by the 


THE GOSPELS 


57 


“ restraining power,” which is probably to be 
understood as the power of the Roman Empire. 
Nevertheless, “ the Mystery of Iniquity ” is al¬ 
ready at work. Shortly, the restraining power 
will be removed. The “ Man of Sin ” will ap¬ 
pear, claiming divine honors, and will commit 
a horrible sacrilege in the temple of God. That 
will be the signal for the immediate coming of 
the Lord to judgment. 

It may well be that those critics are right who 
suggest that the model who sat for this portrait 
of the “ Man of Sin ” was the mad Emperor 
Caligula, whose attempt to set up his image in the 
temple had deeply affronted Jewish sentiment, 
recalling, as it did, the sacrilege of Antiochus 
Epiphanes, which Daniel had described as “ the 
abomination of desolation.” That attempt failed, 
but it showed that the mystery of iniquity was 
already at work, and a second such attempt would 
precipitate the final crisis. The point to be 
observed is that an explanation is being offered of 
the delay of the Lord's advent, along with an 
indication of the infallible signs which will pre¬ 
cede that event. 


58 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

A similar motive is to be discerned in the 
“ Little Apocalypse ” of Mark xiii. It is un¬ 
necessary to demonstrate over again that this 
apocalypse, though embedded in it are sayings 
belonging to the primitive tradition of the teach¬ 
ing of Jesus, is inconsistent with the purport of 
his teaching as a whole, and presupposes knowl¬ 
edge of events after his death. The writer has in 
view the disturbed political situation of the late 
fifties or early sixties, the “ wars and rumors of 
wars ” upon the eastern frontier of the Empire, 
the famines and earthquake shocks recorded 
under Claudius and Nero, and the growing isola¬ 
tion and unpopularity of the Christian church; 
but he is concerned to assure his readers that “ the 
end is not yet.” First the horrible sacrilege must 
take place — “the abomination of desolation 
standing where he ought not,” and then will come 
the final tribulation, the collapse of the physical 
universe and the appearance of the Son of Man 
upon the clouds of heaven. 

These two documents illustrate clearly the 
character of the reconstructed eschatology of the 
early church. It has undoubtedly influenced 


THE GOSPELS 


59 

the tiadition of the teaching of Jesus in the Syn¬ 
optic Gospels . 1 The First Gospel is most deep¬ 
ly affected by it, but none of the three is entirely 
exempt. This is natural, since the tradition had 
undergone considerable development before it 
was embodied in our canonical Gospels, and dur¬ 
ing this time it had been exposed to the influence 
of what we may call the “ futurist eschatology,” 
as distinct from the “realized eschatology” 
which gives its character to the earliest preaching, 
as well as to the earliest tradition of the teaching 
of Jesus. 

This “ futurist ” tendency reaches its climax, 
within the New Testament, in the Revelation of 
John. As a piece of apocalyptic literature it 
takes its place naturally in the series which begins 
with the Book of Daniel, and includes such works 
as the Book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, 
the Apocalypse of Baruch, and 2 Esdras. The 
whole apparatus of Jewish apocalyptic is here 
adapted to Christian use. In cryptic imagery the 
writer refers to current and immediately impend- 

1 See my book, The Par able s of the Kingdom (London, 
Nisbet, 1935), Chaps. IV-VI. 


60 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


ing events — the political conflicts of the time, 
the Parthian menace, the fear of a return of Nero, 
the growth of Caesar-worship, and the intensifi¬ 
cation of persecution — and interprets these as 
the infallible signs of the approaching advent of 
the Lord. The whole emphasis falls upon that 
which is to come. 

The other elements in the kerygma are indeed 
present as a background. The death and resur¬ 
rection of the Lord are presupposed as the con¬ 
dition of his ultimate triumph, and he is seen in 
vision walking in the midst of the golden candle¬ 
sticks which are the churches. But all this is 
subordinated to the intense expectation of glory 
yet to come, which absorbs the writer’s real 
interest. And if we review the book as a whole, 
we must judge that this excessive emphasis on 
the future has the effect of relegating to a second¬ 
ary place just those elements in the original gospel 
which are most distinctive of Christianity — the 
faith that in the finished work of Christ, God 
has already acted for the salvation of man, and the 
blessed sense of living in the divine presence here 
and now. 


THE GOSPELS 


61 


Under the influence of this revived Jewish 
eschatology, Christianity was in danger of falling 
back into the position of the earlier apocalyptists. 
Minds dominated by the fantastic visions of the 
Revelation of John might easily lose the sense 
that all had been made new by the coming of 
Christ, and that in the communion of his people 
the life of the age to come was a present posses¬ 
sion, through the Spirit which he had given. 
They would then be in no better case than, say, 
the authors of the apocalypses of Baruch and 
Ezra, for whom the present had no divine signifi¬ 
cance, but all the energy of faith was absorbed in 
picturing that which should come to pass. That 
would amount to a denial of the substance of the 
gospel. 

The effects of this relapse into a pre-Christian 
eschatology are evident in the tone and temper 
of the Revelation itself. With all the magnifi¬ 
cence of its imagery and the splendor of its 
visions of the majesty of God and the world to 
come, we are bound to judge that in its concep¬ 
tion of the character of God and his attitude to 
man the book falls below the level, not only of 


62 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


the teaching of Jesus, but of the best parts of the 
Old Testament. Our Lord’s proclamation of the 
kingdom of God was associated with a new 
conception of the infinite loving-kindness of the 
heavenly Father. It was “ a new teaching, with 
authority.” Where shall we find its echoes in 
the Revelation of John? At most, in a verse or 
two here and there. The God of the Apocalypse 
can hardly be recognized as the Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, nor has the fierce Messiah, 
whose warriors ride in blood up to their horses’ 
bridles, many traits that could recall him of 
whom the primitive kerygma proclaimed that 
he went about doing good and healing all who 
were oppressed by the devil, because God was 
with him. 

This line of development led into a blind alley. 
In the second century its stream of thought ran 
out into the barren sands of millenarianism, 
which in the end was disavowed by the church. 
Attempts to revive it in later periods have always 
had something artificial and fanatical about them. 
When their authors claim to be returning to 
primitive Christianity, they ignore the fact that 


THE GOSPELS 


6 3 

it is impossible ever to revive the belief that the 
Lord would in literal truth arrive to judgment 
upon the clouds of heaven during the thirties of 
the first century. He did not do so. To work up 
a fantastic expectation that he will arrive in the 
thirties of the twentieth century is not primitive 
Christianity, whatever it may be. 

The possibility of eschatological fanaticism was 
no doubt present in the outlook of the primitive 
church, but it was restrained by the essential 
character of the gospel as apprehended in experi¬ 
ence. The exposure of the illusion which fixed 
an early date for the Lord’s advent, while it 
threw some minds back into the unwholesome 
ferment of apocalyptic speculation, gave to finer 
minds the occasion for grasping more firmly the 
substantive truths of the gospel, and finding for 
them a more adequate expression. 

To return to the primitive kerygma, we recall 
that in it the expectation of the Lord’s return 
was held in close association with a definite valua¬ 
tion of his ministry, death, and resurrection as 
constituting in themselves an eschatological 
process, that is, as a decisive manifestation of the 


64 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

mighty acts of God for the salvation of man. 
Eschatology is not itself the substance of the 
gospel, but a form under which the absolute 
value of the gospel facts is asserted. The second 
advent is not the supreme fact, to which all else is 
preparatory; it is the impending verification of 
the church’s faith that the finished work of 
Christ has in itself absolute value. 

Thus the authentic line of development, as 
the expectation of an immediate advent faded, 
led to a concentration of attention upon the his¬ 
torical facts of the ministry, death, and resurrec¬ 
tion of Jesus, exhibited in an eschatological 
setting which made clear their absolute and final 
quality as saving facts. 

This line of development can be traced in the 
Pauline and other epistles. 

We have already seen that Paul’s preaching 
was centered in the proclamation of the facts of 
the death and resurrection of Christ. His inter¬ 
pretation of these facts starts from the applica¬ 
tion to them of eschatological categories. Thus 
he says that in the death of Christ, God manifested 
his righteousness (Rom. iii. 21-26) and con- 


THE GOSPELS 65 

demned sin in the flesh (Rom. viii. 3). The 
manifestation of righteousness and the con¬ 
demnation of sin are functions of the last judg¬ 
ment. Again, he says that in the cross God 
triumphed over principalities and powers (Col. 
ii. 15). The overthrow of the “ kingdom of the 
enemy ” is in eschatological tradition the coming 
of the kingdom of God, that is, the ultimate 
divine event. Similarly, the resurrection of 
Christ is for Paul the first stage of that trans¬ 
figuration of human nature into a heavenly con¬ 
dition which the apocalypses predicted. He is 
the “ first-fruits of them that sleep ” (1 Cor. xv. 
20), the “ first-born from the dead ” (Col. i. 18), 
and in union with him Christians have already 
experienced the “ new creation,” and are “ being 
transfigured from glory to glory.” 2 Thus the 
death and resurrection of Christ are interpreted 
as the divinely ordained crisis in history through 
which old things passed away and the new order 
came into being. 

It is in this light that we must understand all 
that Paul says about redemption, justification, 

2 Cor. v. 16, Gal. vi. 15, 2 Cor. iii. 18. 


66 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


and the end of the Law. The “ redemption ” of 
Israel out of Egyptian slavery had already become 
for the prophets a foreshadowing of the ultimate 
“ redemption ” of the people of God from all 
the evil of this present age. 3 It is this ultimate 
(eschatological) “redemption” that Paul sees 
to have been accomplished through the death 
and resurrection of Christ. Again, the very idea 
of “ justification ” implies a judgment which has 
already taken place. The righteousness of God 
is already revealed, and it has taken the form, 
as the prophets had foreseen that it would, of 
the “ justification ” of his people. And nothing 
short of the appearance of the age to come could 
supersede the Law, which was the complete 
expression of the purpose of God for man in 
“ this age.” In dying to the Law, and rising into 
newness of life, Christ had made the decisive 
transition, on behalf of the whole people of God. 

Finally, the philosophy of history expounded 
in Rom. ix-xi, and more allusively elsewhere, 
with its acute and convincing valuation of the 

3 See Exod. xv. 13, Deut. vii. 8, Is. i. 27, Jer. xxxi. 11, Is. li. 
11, etc. 


THE GOSPELS 


6 7 


stages of Hebrew and Jewish history, implies a 
corresponding valuation of the events in which, 
for Paul, that history reached fulfillment, the 
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These 
events have the actuality which belongs to the 
historical process as such, and at the same time 
they possess the absolute significance which 
belongs to the eschaton , the ultimate fulfillment 
of the divine purpose in history. 

In the first epistle of Peter the reader is aware 
of an atmosphere which seems in some respects 
nearer to that of the primitive church, as we 
divine it behind the early chapters of Acts, than 
anything else in the New Testament. That in 
general its thought follows the apostolic preach¬ 
ing is clear, and we could easily believe that in 
places its very language is echoed. For this 
writer the theme of all prophecy is “ the suffer¬ 
ings of Christ and the glory to follow ” (i. 11). 
His death, which took place “ at the end of the 
times,” is the fulfillment of the eternal counsel 
of God (i. 20). He died for sins, rose again, 
ascended into heaven, and is on the right hand of 
God — angels, principalities, and powers being 


68 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


subject to him (iii. 18-22). In the light of our 
previous study we shall not be so ready as some 
critics have been to put all this down to “ Pauline 
influence.’’ It is a clear echo of the apostolic 
preaching which lies behind Paul and the whole 
New Testament. 

But it is of particular interest to observe that 
this writer does not dwell exclusively on the bare 
fact that Christ died for our sins, but attaches 
saving significance to his character, and his 
behavior on trial: “ He did no sin, neither was 
any guile found in his mouth. When he was 
abused, he did not retort with abuse. Under 
suffering he uttered no threats, but committed 
himself to him who judges justly” (ii. 22-23). 
It has often been pointed out that this description 
is partly modeled on Isaiah liii, which describes 
the sufferings of the servant of the Lord; but I 
venture to think that the wrong inference has 
often been drawn from this fact. It has been 
said that the writer is not following any historical 
tradition of the life of Jesus, but drawing freely 
from prophecy an ideal picture of the suffering 
Messiah. This is to miss the point. For this 


THE GOSPELS 69 

writer, as for other early Christian thinkers, the 
important thing is the correspondence of proph¬ 
ecy with the facts. That Isaiah foretold such 
behavior on the part of the servant of the Lord 
is important just because Jesus did in fact so 
behave: “ this is that which was spoken by the 
prophet.” Here, therefore, not simply the fact 
that Jesus suffered and died, but the way in 
which his character was exhibited in his suffer¬ 
ings, is a part of the “ eschatological ” fulfillment. 
This goes beyond anything that is explicitly said 
by Paul, though it may be said to be implied in 
such passages as Rom. v. 19, xv. 3; Phil. ii. 8. 

In the epistle to the Hebrews eschatology has 
been reinterpreted in terms of a Platonic scheme. 
The “ age to come ” is identified with that order 
of eternal reality whose shadows or reflections 
form the world of phenomena. The death of 
Christ, therefore, which in the primitive preach¬ 
ing was the crisis of the eschatological process, 
is here his passage into the eternal order (ix. 12, 
24). By dying he has “ consecrated a new and 
living way through the veil” which separated 
human experience from the world of supreme 


yo THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

reality (x. 20). His death is therefore the point 
at which history becomes fully real, exhibiting no 
longer mere shadows, but “the very image of 
realities ” (x. 1). The eschatological valuation 
of the death of Christ thus receives a new inter¬ 
pretation, which gives the clue to this writer’s 
doctrine of his eternal priesthood. 

Accordingly, in the Pauline epistles, in 1 Peter, 
and in Hebrews, the primitive valuation of the 
death and resurrection of Christ as “ eschatologi¬ 
cal ” events is developed in striking ways. But in 
none of these writings is there any sustained 
attempt to give an eschatological interpretation to 
the facts of the ministry of Jesus apart from his 
passion, death, and resurrection, even though all 
three writers are aware that his death was the 
final expression of a character and a moral pur¬ 
pose which displayed itself in his whole incarnate 
life. Paul records that Jesus was born under the 
Law (Gal. iv. 4), that for our sakes he became 
poor (2 Cor. viii. 9), 4 that he pleased not himself 

4 The reference is to the incarnation, but the expression 
would be frigid if it had not been known that Jesus was 
actually a poor man. 


THE GOSPELS 


7 1 


(Rom. xv. 3), that he humbled himself (Phil. ii. 

8) , and that he was obedient in all things to the 
will of God (Rom. v. 19, Phil. ii. 8); and these 
facts he sees to be essential to the saving effect of 
his death. In 1 Peter, as we have seen, his inno¬ 
cence and humility under trial are part of his ful¬ 
fillment of the divine purpose as declared in the 
prophets. In Hebrews, the sacrificial character 
of his death is described in the psalmist’s words, 
44 Lo, I am come to do thy will, O God ” (x. 5- 

9) ; and for this writer his trials and temptations 
(Heb. ii. 18, iv. 15), his discipline of suffering 
(ii. 10), and his agony in prayer (v. 7) are all 
factors in the act by which he consecrated the 
new and living way through the veil. But the 
fact remains that for all these writers the life 
of Jesus is rather the preparation for his death 
and resurrection than itself a part of the decisive 
eschatological event. None of them does full 
justice to the place which the recital of the facts 
of the ministry holds in some forms of the apos¬ 
tolic preaching. 

For a more thoroughgoing valuation of the 


72 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

life of Jesus in eschatological terms we must turn 
to the Synoptic Gospels, and in the first instance 
to Mark. 

I have elsewhere 5 tried to show that we can 
trace in the Gospel according to Mark a con¬ 
necting thread running through much of the 
narrative, which has some similarity to the brief 
summary of the story of Jesus in Acts x and xiii, 
and may be regarded as an expanded form of 
what we may call the historical section of the 
kerygma. 

Let us recall the general scheme of the 
kerygma. It begins by proclaiming that “ this 
is that which was spoken by the prophets the 
age of fulfillment has dawned, and Christ is 
its Lord; it then proceeds to recall the historical 
facts, leading up to the resurrection and exalta¬ 
tion of Christ and the promise of his coming 
in glory; and it ends with the call to repentance 
and the offer of forgiveness. Now, if the Gospel 
according to Mark may be regarded as based 
upon an expanded form of the middle, or his- 

6 “The Framework of the Gospel Narrative,” Expository 
Times , Vol. XLIII, no. 9, 396 ff. 


THE GOSPELS 73 

torical, section, we must observe that this section 
is not, in Mark any more than in the kerygma, 
isolated from the general scheme. The theme 
of Mark’s Gospel is not simply the succession 
of events which ended in the crucifixion of Jesus. 
It is the theme of the kerygma as a whole. 
This is indeed indicated as the evangelist’s inten¬ 
tion by the opening phrase which gives the title of 
the work: “ The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ.” Some patristic writers refer to the 
Gospels as “ memoirs,” thereby placing them in 
a well defined class of Greek literature. But the 
earliest evangelist does not so describe his work. 
He describes it as “ Gospel,” and this word, as we 
have seen, is a virtual equivalent for kerygma. 
Mark therefore conceived himself as writing a 
form of kerygma , and that his Gospel is in fact 
a rendering of the apostolic preaching will 
become clear from an analysis of the book itself. 

After the opening phrase, which I have already 
quoted, the Gospel begins: “ As it is written in 
Isaiah the prophet.” This recalls the first words 
of the kerygma according to Acts ii: “ This is 
that which was spoken by the prophet.” The 


74 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

theme of fulfillment is at once in view. The 
prophecies cited here are those which speak of 
the immediate prelude to the day of the Lord, 
and these Mark sees fulfilled in the appearance 
of John the Baptist, of whose ministry a brief 
account is given, just sufficient to introduce the 
significant words, “ A stronger than I is coming 
after me. 6 I baptized with water, but he will 
baptize you with Holy Spirit.” Once again we 
have an echo of the kerygma of Acts, which finds 
in the descent of the Spirit the sign of the new 
age. John’s proclamation is followed immedi¬ 
ately by the baptism of Jesus, accompanied by a 
vision of the Holy Spirit, and the divine voice 
which acclaims him the Son of God. We know 
from Acts x. 3 8 that this event was interpreted 
as the “ anointing ” of Jesus, by which he was 
designated Messiah, i.e. “ the Anointed,” in ful¬ 
fillment of the prophecy in Isa. lxi. 1. So far, 
therefore, Mark serves as a commentary on the 
kerygma , and explains why in even the very brief 

6 According to Acts xiii. 25 this was actually included in 
some forms of the apostolic preaching, though as it does not 
usually enter into such details, we may perhaps suspect some 
influence of the Gospels reflected back upon the kerygma out 
of which they developed. 


THE GOSPELS 


75 

summaries of it which we have in Acts x and xiii 
so much stress is laid on the part taken by John 
the Baptist. 

Mark now relates how Jesus came into Galilee 
preaching the kingdom of God, and his summary 
of this preaching would serve, as we have seen, 
equally well for a skeleton outline of the 
preaching of the primitive church: “ The time 
is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has drawn 
near. Repent and believe the gospel.” 

Down to this point we are reading the 
exordium of the book, which serves quite defi¬ 
nitely to place the whole narrative within the 
framework of the kerygma. From this point 
detailed narrative begins, chiefly in the form of 
more or less detached episodes, loosely strung 
upon the thread of an outline whose form can be 
recognized in the comparatively colorless sum¬ 
maries which link the episodes together, until 
with the story of the passion we enter upon a 
continuous and highly wrought dramatic narra¬ 
tive. 

The passion narrative itself occupies a dispro¬ 
portionately large section of the Gospel, almost 


76 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

exactly one-fifth of the whole. Not only so, but 
rather more than half the Gospel, from the mid¬ 
dle of chapter viii, is dominated by the thought 
of the approaching passion. From the first 
announcement, “ The Son of Man must suffer,” 
in viii. 31, onward, the shadow of the cross falls 
upon the whole story. This corresponds to the 
emphasis of the apostolic preaching, both in its 
formulation in Acts and in its development in 
Paul and Hebrews. The earliest Gospel is pre¬ 
eminently a gospel of the passion. 

The story of the passion, however, is prefaced, 
in chapters i-viii, as it is in Acts x, by an account 
of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee when he went 
about doing good and healing those who were 
oppressed by the devil. Here again Mark serves 
as commentary on the kerygma, for his appar¬ 
ently artless series of episodes from the Galilean 
ministry builds up a cumulative impression of 
the decisive significance of the facts. The works 
of Jesus are works of divine power. With 
authority he commands the unclean spirits, and 
Satan’s dominion is at an end; for no one could 
plunder the strong man’s house if he had not first 


THE GOSPELS 77 

bound the strong man. Not only in his death, 
Mark means to say, but in his ministry, Jesus 
overcame the principalities and powers. As the 
prophets had declared that in the age to come 
the eyes of the blind should be opened and the 
ears of the deaf unstopped, so Jesus heals the blind 
and the deaf, and restores strength to the palsied 
and life to the dead. He teaches, again, with 
authority and not as the scribes. He releases 
men from the obligations of the Law and the 
tradition, and pronounces the forgiveness of sins. 
By his sovereign will he calls men, even those 
who are without the Law, and they rise and 
follow. And to those who follow he says, “ To 
you is given the mystery of the kingdom of 
God.” 

This all leads up to the momentous question, 
“ Who do you say that I am? ” and Peter’s reply, 
“Thou art the Messiah,” puts into words the 
conviction that the whole narrative has been 
intended to create in the mind of the reader. The 
Messiah has appeared, and in him the kingdom of 
God has come. The story takes on its eschato¬ 
logical significance. So now the way is clear for 


78 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

the proclamation of Christ and him crucified. 
“ The Son of Man must suffer many things, and 
be rejected, and rise again.” The theme of the 
rest of the Gospel is “ the sufferings of Christ 
and the glory to follow,” which, as the first epistle 
of Peter says, is the theme of all prophecy. 

Observe how subtly the story of the passion is 
set within a frame of glory. The first announce¬ 
ment of suffering is followed immediately by the 
vision of the glory of Christ in the story of the 
transfiguration. The Lord appears attended by 
the historic figures of Moses and Elijah. Then 
the cloud of the divine glory descends upon him 
and a voice declares, “ This is my beloved Son ”; 
and forthwith Moses and Elijah are seen no more; 
the Law and the prophets have vanished in the 
moment of their fulfillment, and “ they saw no 
one but Jesus alone.” Then follows the fateful 
journey to Jerusalem, punctuated with renewed 
predictions of the sufferings that await him there, 
and ending with the messianic entry into the city 
and the cleansing of the temple. We recall the 
words of prophecy, “ The Lord whom ye seek 


THE GOSPELS 


79 

shall suddenly come to his temple, but who may 
abide the day of his coming? ” (Mai. iii. 1-2). 

And so the stage is set for the description of 
the passion itself, which is given in a tone of 
unrelieved tragedy, with none of those alleviating 
touches which the other evangelists have allowed 
themselves. In its grim realism it is almost over¬ 
whelming to read. But once again, the tragedy 
is framed in glory. In chapter xiii Mark has 
interrupted the narrative to insert the apocalyptic 
discourse to which I have already referred. Con¬ 
sidered as an independent composition, which 
it appears originally to have been, the “Little 
Apocalypse ” must be held to belong to a line 
of development which had no real future before 
it. But as incorporated in the gospel of the 
passion it acquires a different perspective. For 
it serves to assure the reader that the story of 
suffering and defeat to which it is the immediate 
prelude has for its other side that eternal weight 
of glory which Christ attained through his 
passion. The balance of the original kerygma is 
restored. 


8 o THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

This, then, is the introduction of the passion 
story. It ends on a similar note. The darkness 
which was upon the face of the whole earth while 
Christ died broods over the narrative until his 
dying cry is stilled. And then — “ The veil of 
the temple was rent in two from top to bottom.” 
This rending of the veil we have already met 
with. It is the veil that lay between men and 
the presence of God. Christ has now conse¬ 
crated a new and living way through the veil: 
God is revealed, in his kingdom, power, and 
glory. Not Paul himself could have set forth 
more startlingly the divine paradox of the glory 
of the cross. “ And when the centurion saw that 
he so died, he said, ‘Truly this man was the 
Son of God.’ ” As Peter’s confession prepared 
the way for the story of the passion, so the con¬ 
fession of the pagan soldier provides the final 
comment upon it. 

Mark then proceeded, according to the 
formula of the kerygma in i Cor. xv, to record 
how Christ was buried and rose again the third 
day according to the Scriptures. But unfor¬ 
tunately only a fragment of his resurrection 


THE GOSPELS 


81 


narrative has survived; enough, however, to 
show what the climax of the Gospel was. The 
story of the saving facts is complete. 

We see clearly, therefore, how fitly Mark’s 
work is described not as “ memoirs ” of Jesus, but 
as “ gospel.” Whether the other early attempts 
to “ compose a narrative of the facts that were 
accomplished among us,” to which Luke refers in 
his preface, had the same character, it is impos¬ 
sible to say. But in any case the scheme of gospel 
writing laid down by Mark became the model on 
which the other canonical Gospels were com¬ 
posed. 

We discern, however, in Matthew and Luke 
a certain departure from the original perspective 
and emphasis of the kerygma. In both of them 
the narrative of the passion, death, and resur¬ 
rection of Jesus occupies a smaller proportion of 
the whole: in Matthew roughly one-seventh, in 
Luke about one-sixth, as compared with one-fifth 
in Mark; and in estimating these proportions we 
must remember that when Mark was complete, 
its resurrection narrative was certainly a good 
deal longer. 


82 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


In both Matthew and Luke, however, an 
element in the kerygma receives emphasis which 
is not prominent in Mark, that, namely, which 
declared that Christ was “born of the seed of 
David,” and so qualified for messiahship accord¬ 
ing to prophecy. The genealogies which both 
supply are intended as documentation of this 
fact, and in Matthew the descent from David is 
frequently mentioned. The nativity narratives, 
on the other hand, which are in formal contra¬ 
diction to the genealogies (since these trace the 
Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph, though 
he was not, according to the nativity narratives, 
his father) cannot be derived from the ke- 
rygma? 

Matthew further emphasizes the theme of 
“ fulfillment ” by his practice of systematically 
citing prophecies which he regards as fulfilled 
in various episodes of the life of Jesus. The con¬ 
nections which he suggests sometimes appear to 

7 In Theologische Blatter (December 1935, pp. 289-97), 
Professor Karl Ludwig Schmidt suggests that the story of the 
virgin birth was derived from a form of tradition handed down 
in relative secrecy. Whether or not that was so, it has no 
direct connection with the kerygma , which was in its nature 
a public proclamation. 


THE GOSPELS 


83 

the modern reader artificial, but in substance his 
view is conformable to the apostolic preaching. 
For the rest, there are two main tendencies to 
be discerned in the First Gospel. 

On the one hand, it contains, in addition to 
the Markan narrative, a large collection of sayings 
of Jesus, arranged so as to form a fairly systematic 
account of his teaching. It is presented as a new 
law given by the messianic king. In the apostolic 
preaching, as we have seen, there is only slight 
allusion to the work of Jesus as teacher. The 
incorporation of this fresh material has the effect 
of modifying in some degree the character in 
which Christianity is presented. It is not so much 
a gospel of “ realized eschatology ” as a new and 
higher code of ethics. This change was natural 
enough; for when it became necessary to readjust 
the Christian outlook to the indefinite postpone¬ 
ment of the second advent and judgment, the 
church had to organize itself as a permanent 
society living the life of the redeemed people 
of God in an unredeemed world. Everything, 
therefore, in the tradition of the teaching of 
Jesus which could afford guidance for the con- 


84 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

duct of the community in this situation came to 
be of especial value. Matthew is, in fact, no 
longer in the pure sense a “ gospel.” It combines 
kerygma with didache , and if we regard the book 
as a whole, the element of didache predomi¬ 
nates . 8 

On the other hand, Matthew compensates for 
this change of emphasis by a marked development 
of “ futurist eschatology.” The expectation of 
the second advent has a larger place in this Gospel 
than in any other. We might express the dis¬ 
tinctively Matthean view of the gospel somewhat 
after this fashion: Christ came in fulfillment of 
prophecy as Messiah; but his messianic activity 
at his first coming consisted chiefly in the exposi¬ 
tion of the new and higher law by which his 
people should five until his second coming. This 
line of thought clearly had great influence in 
determining the form in which popular Christi¬ 
anity emerged in the second century. 

In Luke the change is more subtle. We may 
describe it as due to an increased interest in Jesus 

8 It has always been recognized that the document known 
as the Didache , or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles , has a 
special affinity with the didactic portions of the First Gospel. 


THE GOSPELS 


85 

as a human wonder-worker, as the friend and 
lover of men, especially of those who were with¬ 
out the Law, as the ideal for Christian conduct. 
All this is no more than is implied in the phrase 
of the kerygma which describes him as “ going 
about doing good, because God was with him,” 
and it affords a necessary and valuable supplement 
to the Markan picture of the strong Son of God, 
and the Matthean picture of the royal lawgiver. 
But again it represents a certain modification of 
the original perspective. It is in some measure a 
rationalized and humanitarian rendering of the 
gospel, designed to appeal to the average man of 
feeling. The exceptional powers of sympathetic 
imagination and of literary expression possessed 
by this evangelist make his work the most effec¬ 
tive of all as a human and, so to speak, secular 
approach to the “ Jesus of history,” but it does 
not lie on the main classical line of development 
from the apostolic preaching. 

For the sake of brevity and emphasis I have 
perhaps exaggerated the differences between 
Mark and the other Synoptic Gospels. The 
Gospels of Matthew and Luke do, after all, fall 


86 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


well within the general scheme of the kerygma, 
though they subtly alter its perspective. It is, 
however, in the Fourth Gospel that we return to 
the main line of development which runs through 
Mark from the original apostolic preaching, 
though here the eschatological framework has 
been transformed into something widely dif¬ 
ferent. One of the points in which the criticism 
of the last century was most notably at fault was 
its assumption that the line ran from Mark 
through Matthew and Luke to John. In some 
important respects Matthew and Luke represent 
sidetracks from the main line. But I shall have 
to return to the Fourth Gospel in the last lec¬ 
ture. 

It is surely clear that the fourfold Gospel 
taken as a whole is an expression of the original 
apostolic preaching. Of this the early church 
was well aware. The Muratorian canon, prob¬ 
ably representing the work of Hippolytus, the 
dissenting Bishop of Rome about the end of the 
second century, justifies the presence of four 
separate Gospels in the canon of the New Testa¬ 
ment in these terms: 


THE GOSPELS 


87 

Although various principles are taught in 
the several Gospel books, this makes no dif¬ 
ference to the faith of believers, since by 
one governing Spirit in them all, the facts 
are declared concerning the nativity, the 
passion, the resurrection, his converse with 
the disciples, and his two advents, the first 
which was in humility of aspect, according 
to the power of his royal Father, and the 
glorious one which is yet to come. 

Hippolytus means that the four Gospels 
embody the original apostolic preaching of the 
“saving facts,” and are as such accepted as 
authoritative by the church. 

I have not here considered the question of the 
historical value of the Gospels as a record of 
facts. That question is aside from the immediate 
purpose of these lectures. But I would observe 
that the latest developments in gospel criticism 
have somewhat shifted the incidence of the prob¬ 
lem of historicity. We are not to think of the 
record in the Gospels as the ultimate raw material 
out of which the preaching was constructed. 


88 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


The kerygma is primary, and it acted as a pre¬ 
servative of the tradition which conveyed the 
facts. The nearer we are in the Gospels to 
the stuff of the kerygma , the nearer we are to 
the fountainhead of the tradition. There never 
existed a tradition formed by a dry historical 
interest in the facts as facts. From the beginning 
the facts were preserved in memory and tradition 
as elements in the gospel which the church pro¬ 
claimed. 

This, no doubt, means that we cannot expect 
to find in the Gospels (except by accident, as, for 
example, in Mark xiv. 51-52) bare matter of fact, 
unaffected by the interpretation borne by the 
facts in the kerygma . But it also means that 
wherever the Gospels keep close to the matter 
and form of the kerygnia, there we are in touch 
with a tradition coeval with the church itself. 
For, as we have seen, a comparison of Paul and 
Acts enables us to trace the essential elements in 
the apostolic preaching to a very early date in¬ 
deed. The history of Jesus, even as history, was 
of decisive importance for the tradition, just 
because in the preaching the life, death, and resur- 


THE GOSPELS 


89 

rection of Jesus were held to be the climax of all 
history, the coming of the kingdom of God. I 
believe that a sober and instructed criticism of the 
Gospels justifies the belief that in their central 
and dominant tradition they represent the testi¬ 
mony of those who stood nearest to the facts, and 
whose life and outlook had been molded by them. 




PAUL AND JOHN 






Ill 


PAUL AND JOHN 


In the last lecture we traced one line of de- 
velopment from the original apostolic preaching; 
that, namely, which starting from the eschato¬ 
logical valuation of facts of the past, the life, 
death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, resulted 
in the production of that distinctively Christian 
form of literature known as Gospels. We have 
now to turn once more to the primitive kerygma, 
with special attention to that part of it which 
attributed an eschatological significance to facts 
of the present. 

We have seen that the apostolic preaching 
according to Acts ii included an appeal to the 

93 


94 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

presence and work of the Holy Spirit in the 
church as evidence that the age of fulfillment had 
dawned, and that Jesus Christ was its Lord. 
“ This is that which was spoken by the prophet. 
. . . I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. . . . 
He being exalted at the right hand of God, and 
having received the promise of the Holy Spirit 
from the Father, has poured out that which you 
see and hear and it includes also an assurance 
that those who join the Christian community 
“ receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” 

It is true that in other forms of the kerygma in 
Acts there is no such explicit reference to the 
Spirit in the church, except in v. 32, which 
belongs to what is probably a secondary doublet 
of the story given in iii-iv. It is true also that Paul 
does not expressly say that the gift of the Spirit 
was a part of what he proclaimed as gospel. But 
in Acts and epistles alike it is clear that the fact of 
life in the Spirit is presupposed. The primitive 
church, in proclaiming its gospel to the world, 
offered its own fellowship and experience as the 
realization of the gospel. This is of the essence 
of the matter. In the Christian experience as it 


95 


PAUL AND JOHN 

was enjoyed in the fellowship, the early believers 
were confident that they were in possession of 
the supernatural blessings which the prophets had 
foretold. 

Quite naively, they were impressed by the 
abnormal psychical phenomena — faith healing, 
second sight, “ speaking with tongues,” and the 
like — which broke out at Pentecost, and accom¬ 
panied the extension of Christianity beyond the 
borders of Judea. The reality of these phe¬ 
nomena there is not the slightest reason to doubt. 
Paul himself declares that his missionary work 
was accomplished “in the power of signs and 
wonders, in the power of Holy Spirit ” (Rom. xv. 
19), and he regards “works of power, gifts of 
healing, divers kinds of tongues ” (1 Cor. xii. 28) 
as normal in the life of the church. We have 
now sufficient records of similar phenomena at 
other times of religious “revival,” not only 
within Christianity, to justify the view that they 
are usual accompaniments of religious emotion 
raised to a certain pitch of intensity. 

But it is clear that behind them lay, as Paul saw, 
a new quality of life, with which this intense 


96 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

emotion was associated. The naive interest of 
the author of Acts in the miraculous should not 
prevent us from recognizing that he is in fact 
describing a corporate life which had this new 
quality. One thing he definitely sets forth as 
the result of life in the Spirit, namely, the social 
unity created by it, which expressed itself alike 
in a remarkably intimate fellowship in worship 
and in the sharing of needs and resources. 1 For 
this special type of social unity Paul found the 
fitting expression: “ the fellowship of the Holy 
Spirit ” (2 Cor. xiii. 13, Phil. ii. 1). The phrase 
is his; the thing was there from the outset. And 
his critical analysis of “gifts of the Spirit” (1 
Cor. xii-xiv), which results in giving a relatively 
low place to abnormal phenomena, and exalting 
to the highest places moral and intellectual en¬ 
dowments, and, above all, agape , love or charity, 
is a genuinely scientific estimate of the situation 
as it was from the beginning. This does not 
mean a tempering of the supernatural character of 

1 Acts ii. 44-47, iv. 32-37. It is noteworthy that each of 
these accounts of the “ communism ” of the primitive church, 
which are thought to emanate from separate sources, is given 
as the immediate sequel to an account of the descent of the 
Holy Spirit. 


97 


PAUL AND JOHN 

the primitive Christian experience. It is a recog¬ 
nition of the essential quality of the supernatural 
as revealed in Christ. 

The primitive church, while it enjoyed the 
fellowship of the Holy Spirit and appealed to 
the manifest work of the Spirit (somewhat 
naively conceived) as evidence of the dawn of 
the new age, did not reflect upon it. Nor did 
it embody any clear doctrine of the fellowship 
in its preaching. Such a doctrine first appears in 
the epistles of Paul. 

Paul had reflected deeply upon the new life 
realized in the Christian community. It may 
well be that before his conversion his attention 
had been arrested by the free, joyful, and en¬ 
thusiastic fellowship of these sectaries. However 
that may be, when he became a Christian he fully 
accepted the belief of the primitive disciples that 
this new life was a manifestation of the Holy 
Spirit. The miraculous unity of the fellowship, 
he believed, was the creation of the Spirit, “ for 
in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body ” 
(i Cor. xii. 13); and the diversity of gifts, by the 
same Spirit, was divinely intended as the equip- 


98 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

ment of members of the body for function in its 
life. He also believed, as is implied in the citation 
of prophecy in Acts ii. 17-21, that this life in the 
Spirit marked the church as being the true “ Israel 
of God ” in its final, “ eschatological ” manifesta¬ 
tion (Gal. vi. 15-16). But his reflection upon 
this idea led him to a more profound interpreta¬ 
tion of it. In order to appreciate it we must give 
some consideration to the background of the 
idea. 

The idea of a supernatural messianic com¬ 
munity developed in Jewish prophecy and apoc¬ 
alypse. We may find it already in Isaiah’s 
doctrine of the remnant: 

It shall come to pass, that he that is left 
in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, 
shall be called holy, even everyone that is 
written among the living in Jerusalem; when 
the Lord shall have washed away the filth 
of the daughters of Zion, and shall have 
purged the blood of Jerusalem from the 
midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment and 
by the spirit of burning. 2 And the Lord 

2 Cf. Matt. iii. 7-12, Luke xii. 49, 2 Thess. i. 8. 


PAUL AND JOHN 99 

will create over the whole habitation of 
Zion, and over her assemblies, a cloud and 
smoke by day and the shining of a flaming 
fire 3 by night. [Isa. iv. 3-5] 

Ezekiel pictures the emergence of this ideal 
Israel in the figure of the resurrection of the dry 
bones: 

Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will 
open your graves, and cause you to come up 
out of your graves, O my people . . . and 
I will put my spirit into you and ye shall 
live. 4 [Ezek. xxxvii. 12-14] 

In Malachi the remnant idea appears in a 
strongly eschatological context: 

Then they that feared the Lord spake 
one with another; and the Lord hearkened 
and heard, and a book of remembrance was 
written before him, for them that feared the 
Lord and that thought upon his name. And 
they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, 
in the day when I act, even a peculiar 

8 Cf. Acts ii. 3, 19. 4 Cf. Rom. vi. 3-11, vii. 6. 


ioo THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


treasure. ... For behold the day cometh, 
it burneth as a furnace, and all that work 
wickedness shall be stubble; and the day 
that cometh shall burn them up, saith the 
Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither 
root nor branch. But unto you that fear my 
name shall the sun of righteousness arise 
with healing in his wings. 5 [Mai. iii. 16- 
17, iv. 1-2] 

In the book of Daniel the ideal Israel appears 
as “ the people of the saints of the Most High,” 
identified with the “Son of Man” of Daniel’s 
vision, to whom the kingdom is given 6 (vii. 13- 
14, 22-27). In the similitudes of Enoch, the 
“ congregation of the righteous,” also called 
“ the elect ” and “ the holy,” appear along with 
the elect, righteous, or holy one who is also called 
the Son of Man: 

From the beginning the Son of Man was 
hidden, and the Most High preserved him 
in the presence of his might, and revealed 

6 Cf. 2 Cor. iv. 6. 

6 Cf. Rom. v. 17, 1 Cor. vi. 2, 2 Tim. ii. 12 (a “faithful 
saying,” i.e. a statement of the faith). 


IOI 


PAUL AND JOHN 

him to the elect. And the congregation of 
the elect and holy shall be sown, and all the 
elect shall stand before him on that day. 
. . . And the Lord of Spirits will abide over 
them, and with that Son of Man shall they 
eat, 7 and lie down and rise up for ever and 
ever. And they shall have been clothed 
with garments of glory, and these shall be 
the garments of life from the Lord of 
Spirits; 8 and your garments shall not grow 
old, nor your glory pass away 9 before the 
Lord of spirits. [Enoch lxii. 7-8, 14-16] 

It is unnecessary to point out how much of the 
imagery and ideas of such passages as these, which 
could be greatly multiplied, reappears in various 
parts of the New Testament. 

For Paul, with his strongly eschatological 
background of thought, the belief that the church 
was the “ people of the saints of the Most High,” 
now revealed in the last days, carried with it the 
corollary that all that prophecy and apocalypse 
had asserted of the supernatural messianic com- 

7 Cf. Luke xxii. 29-30, Acts x. 41, 1 Cor. x. 16-17. 

8 Cf. 2 Cor. v. 1-5. 9 Cf. 2 Cor. iii. 12-18. 


io2 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


munity was fulfilled in the church. But the 
eschatological scheme of the apocalypses had 
been profoundly disturbed by the fact that the 
Messiah had come and the kingdom of God had 
been revealed, while yet this world continued to 
exist and the people of God were still in the body. 
The Messiah indeed had himself passed into the 
eternal order, but his followers still lived “ in the 
flesh” (though not “after the flesh”). How, 
then, could it be true that the prophecies were 
fulfilled which spoke of the congregation of the 
righteous being transfigured into the glory of an 
immortal life? 

Paul found the answer to this question through 
a restatement in more thoroughgoing terms of 
the unity existing between the Messiah and the 
messianic community. Christ, said the kerygma, 
was Son of God “according to the Spirit of 
holiness.” The same Spirit dwelt in his church. 
Thus the “ communion of the Holy Spirit ” was 
also “ the communion of the Son of God ” (i 
Cor. i. 9). It was not enough to say that Christ, 
being exalted to the right hand of God, had 
“ poured forth ” the Spirit. The presence of the 


PAUL AND JOHN 103 

Spirit in the church is the presence of the Lord: 
“ the Lord is the Spirit ” (2 Cor. iii. 17). Thus 
the “ one body ” which the one Spirit created is 
the body of Christ. To be “ in the Spirit ” is to 
be “ in Christ,” that is to say, a member of the 
body of Christ. The personality of Christ re¬ 
ceives, so to speak, an extension in the life of his 
body on earth. Those “ saving facts,” the death 
and resurrection of Christ, are not merely par¬ 
ticular facts of past history, however decisive in 
their effect; they are re-enacted in the experience 
of the church. If Christ died to this world, so 
have the members of his body; if he has risen into 
newness of life, so have they (Rom. vi. 4); if he 
being risen from the dead, dieth no more, neither 
do they (Rom. vi. 8-9); if God has glorified him, 
he has also glorified them (Rom. viii. 29-30). 
They are righteous, holy, glorious, immortal, 
according to the prophecies, with the righteous¬ 
ness, holiness, glory, and immortality which are 
his in full reality, and are theirs in the communion 
of his body — “ in Christ.” 

This is the basis of Paul’s so-called “ Christ- 
mysticism.” It is noteworthy that as his interest 


io 4 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

in the speedy advent of Christ declines, as it 
demonstrably does after the time when he wrote 
i Corinthians, 10 the “ futurist eschatology ” of 
his earlier phase is replaced by this “ Christ- 
mysticism.” The hope of glory yet to come 
remains as a background of thought, but the fore¬ 
ground is more and more occupied by the con¬ 
templation of all the riches of divine grace 
enjoyed here and now by those who are in Christ 
Jesus. “ Blessed be the God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus, who has blessed us with every spir¬ 
itual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ! ” 
(Eph. i. 3). 

This was the true solution of the problem 
presented to the church by the disappointment 
of its naive expectation that the Lord would 
immediately appear; not the restless and impatient 
straining after signs of his coming which turned 
faith into fantasy and enthusiasm into fanaticism; 
but a fuller realization of all the depths and 
heights of the supernatural life here and now. 
The prayer of the church as taught by Paul was 

10 See my article, “ The Mind of Paul: Change and Develop¬ 
ment,” in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Vol. XVIII, 
no. 1. 


PAUL AND JOHN 105 

no longer, “ Let grace come and let this world 
pass away. O Lord, come! ” 11 but “ to be 
strengthened by his Spirit in the inner man; that 
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye 
being rooted and grounded in love, may be 
strong to apprehend with all saints what is the 
breadth and length and depth and height, and 
to know the love of Christ that passeth knowl¬ 
edge, that ye may be filled unto all the fullness 
of God ” (Eph. iii. 16-19). 

This transformation of eschatology into mys¬ 
ticism (if that is the right word) had conse¬ 
quences in the practical sphere. That there is a 
certain tension or even contradiction between 
eschatology and ethics has often been observed. 
To be sure the thought of judgment to come 
may provide a powerful motive for ethical con¬ 
duct, and the exhortation to watch and pray lest 
the judgment day come upon you like a thief in 
the night is never altogether out of place. But 
an exclusive concentration of attention upon 
glory to come, with the corresponding devalua¬ 
tion of the present, its duties and opportunities, 

11 Didache, x. 6. 


10 6 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


its social claims and satisfactions, obscures the 
finer and more humane aspects of morality. We 
have already noticed how lamentably the out¬ 
look of the Revelation of John falls below the 
ethical ideals of the gospel. Now, in the epistles 
of Paul, the doctrine of the church as the body 
of Christ, the sphere of divine grace and of 
supernatural life, is the foundation for a strong, 
positive, and constructive social ethic, which 
develops in a remarkable way the ethical teach¬ 
ing of Jesus. 

If Christ lives in his church, then love shown 
to the brethren is a part of that communion with 
Christ which is life eternal. “ Be of one mind; 
have the same love. Do nothing in strife or vain¬ 
glory, but in lowliness of mind think each other 
better than yourselves. Do not seek your own 
ends, but one another’s. In a word, have the 
same thoughts among yourselves as you have in 
your communion with Christ Jesus , 12 who being 
in the form of God humbled himself and became 

12 This translation, which follows that of Erich Haupt in 
Meyer’s Commentary, seems to me to give the correct sense 
of this difficult sentence. The current rendering does violence 
to the Greek. 


PAUL AND JOHN 107 

obedient even unto death; for which reason God 
exalted him and gave him the name above every 
name” (Phil. ii. 3 ff.). Here we have ethics 
developing directly out of “ Christ-mysticism.” 
It is noteworthy that while Paul’s reflection upon 
the saving facts of the death and resurrection of 
Christ leads him to the love of God as the 
supreme principle exhibited in these facts, it is 
his reflection upon the Spirit and the charismata 
or gifts of the Spirit in the church that leads him 
to love or charity as at once the greatest of all 
charismata — “ the love of God shed abroad in 
our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us ” (Rom. 
v. 5) — and the root principle of all morality. 13 
The true supernatural life, now brought into 
being by Christ, is the life distinguished by the 
“ fruits of the Spirit ” as described in Gal. v. 20, 
and exhibiting the dispositions set forth in the 
hymn of charity in 1 Cor. xiii. 

It is in the epistles of Paul, therefore, that full 
justice is done for the first time to the principle 
of “ realized eschatology ” which is vital to the 

18 See my article, “ The Ethics of the Pauline Epistles,” in 
The Evolution of Ethics, edited by Hershey Sneath (Yale 
University Press, 1927), pp. 308-12. 


io 8 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


whole kerygma. That supernatural order of life 
which the apocalyptists had predicted in times of 
pure fantasy is now described as an actual fact of 
experience. In its final form, it is true, the con¬ 
summation of life is still a matter of hope, but the 
earnest ( arrhabon ) of the inheritance is a present 
possession; and an arrhabon is a sample of goods 
guaranteed to be of the same kind and quality 
as the main consignment. In masterly fashion 
Paul has claimed the whole territory of the 
church’s life as the field of the eschatological 
miracle. 

In the Fourth Gospel the crudely eschato¬ 
logical elements in the kerygma are quite refined 
away. It is true that the eschatological outlook 
survives in the anticipation of a day when those 
who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the 
Son of God, and come forth to the resurrection of 
life or of judgment (v. 28-29). But the evange¬ 
list points out with emphasis that this is not the 
resurrection to which the gospel primarily refers. 
“I know,” says Martha, “that he will rise at 
the resurrection on the last day”; and Jesus 
replies, “ I am the resurrection and the life. . . . 


PAUL AND JOHN 109 

He who is alive and believes on me will never 
die” (xi. 24-26). That is to say, eternal life 
is a present and permanent possession of believers 
in Christ. Again, in the farewell discourse Jesus 
is made to promise that he will “ come again,” 
but it is made clear that this promise of a second 
coming is realized in the presence of the Para¬ 
clete, the Holy Spirit, in the life of the church 
(xiv. 16-19, xy i. 12-16). The evangelist, there¬ 
fore, is deliberately subordinating the “ futurist ” 
element in the eschatology of the early church 
to the “ realized eschatology ” which, as I have 
tried to show, was from the first the distinctive 
and controlling factor in the kerygma. His 
theme is life eternal, that is to say, in eschato¬ 
logical language, the life of the age to come, but 
life eternal as realized here and now through the 
presence of Christ by his Spirit in the church. 

The fact is that in this gospel even more fully 
than in Paul eschatology is sublimated into a 
distinctive kind of mysticism. Its underlying 
philosophy, like that of the epistle to the 
Hebrews, is of a Platonic cast, which is always 
congenial to the mystical outlook. The ultimate 


no THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


reality, instead of being, as in Jewish apocalyptic, 
figured as the last term in the historical series, is 
conceived as an eternal order of being, of which 
the phenomenal order in history is the shadow 
or symbol. This eternal order is the kingdom of 
God, into which Christians have been born again, 
by water and the Spirit (iii. 3-8). That is to say, 
life is for them fully real; they are nurtured by 
the real bread and abide in the real vine. This 
is the Johannine equivalent for the primitive 
Christian declaration that the age of fulfillment 
has dawned, or the Pauline declaration that if 
any man is in Christ there is a new creation. Its 
organic relation to primitive eschatological con¬ 
ceptions can be illustrated in various ways. 

In prophecy the promise of the future was 
associated with the knowledge or vision of God. 
When Jeremiah speaks of the new covenant by 
which the true Israel of the future shall be consti¬ 
tuted, he gives as its outstanding feature, “ They 
shall all know me, from the least of them unto the 
greatest of them, saith the Lord” (xxxi. 34). 
Again, in Isa. Iii: “ Awake, awake, put on thy 
strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, 


PAUL AND JOHN m 

Q Jerusalem! Ye were sold for nought, and ye 
shall be redeemed without money. Therefore 
my people shall know my name: They shall 
know in that day that I am he .” 14 The signifi¬ 
cance of such declarations becomes clearer when 
we observe that while the prophets repeatedly 
speak of the knowledge which God has of his 
people, their knowledge of God is almost always 
the object of prayer, aspiration, command, or 
promise. Ideally, Israel knows God as God 
knows him; but actually such knowledge is, in 
any full sense, reserved for the glorious future. 
The Fourth Evangelist takes up the idea, and 
declares that now, as never before, authentic 
knowledge of God is available for men in union 
with Christ, the Son who knows the Father as 
he is known by him; and such knowledge is 
eternal life . 15 

Here the language of the Fourth Gospel 
approximates to that of contemporary Hel¬ 
lenistic mysticism, which taught that by gnosis 
man might enter into union with God, and so 

14 This “I am he” of the Deutero-Isaiah becomes in the 
Fourth Gospel the solemn affirmation of the finality of Christ: 
viii. 28, xiii. 19. 15 John x. 15, xvii. 3. 


11 2 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

become divine and immortal. It seems clear that 
the evangelist’s intention was to reinterpret the 
Christian gospel in terms agreeable to the most 
elevated kind of religious experience, outside 
Christianity, with which he was acquainted, 
recognizing that in it there was something of the 
light that lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world. 

But it would be a mistake to suppose that the 
Johannine doctrine of eternal life through knowl¬ 
edge of God is merely a variety of the current 
teaching of Hellenistic mysticism. The knowl¬ 
edge of God of which the evangelist speaks is 
a function of the Christian fellowship. As Paul 
recognized in the Christian church the marks of 
the supernatural messianic community, in so far 
as it was the body of Christ, so John teaches that 
knowledge of God and eternal life are enjoyed 
by those who are united to Christ. To be united 
to Christ means to be the object of his love in 
laying down his life for his friends, and in return 
to love him, to trust and obey him, and to love 
all those who belong to him . 16 This divine love 

16 John x. 11-15, xv. 13-17, xiv. 23-24, xiii. 34-35. 


PAUL AND JOHN 113 

was the power which in Christ brought eternal 
life within reach: “ God so loved the world that 
he gave his only Son that whosoever believeth in 
him should not perish, but have everlasting life ” 
(iii. 16). This agrees with the Pauline interpre¬ 
tation of the character of the supernatural life 
given to the church: God commended his love in 
that Christ died for us, and that love is shed 
abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. 

We can hardly call this anything but mysti¬ 
cism but it is mysticism with a difference. It 
arises directly out of the primitive Christian 
valuation of the facts of history and experience as 
eschatological facts, that is, as the ultimate mani¬ 
festation in time of the eternal counsel of God. 

John, however, takes a step beyond Paul. 
Paul, as we have seen, derives from the eschato¬ 
logical valuation of the church’s life in the Spirit 
a “ Christ-mysticism ” which represents a con¬ 
clusive reinterpretation of eschatology; and he 
also presents the death and resurrection of Jesus 
in their full meaning as eschatological facts. But 
of the life of Jesus he makes little except as 
preparation for his death. Here the Synoptic 


n 4 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

Gospels do more justice to that part of the 
kerygma which recited the facts of the life of 
Jesus as an integral element in the eschatological 
process. Now for John the whole life of Jesus 
is in the fullest sense a revelation of his glory. 
What was true of Christ’s work in the church 
after his resurrection was already true of his 
words and works in the flesh. By them, as truly* 
as by his death and resurrection, he brought life 
and light into the world. John therefore draws 
together two separate strains in the development 
of Christian thought: that which started from 
an eschatological valuation of the facts of present 
experience, and that which started from a similar 
valuation of the facts of past history. Accord¬ 
ingly, he has given to his work the form of a 
“ gospel,” that is to say, of a restatement of the 
kerygma in historical terms. 

In the Fourth Gospel we can discern, no less 
clearly than in Mark, and even more clearly than 
in Matthew and Luke, the fixed outline of the 
historical section of the kerygma as we have it 
in Acts x and xiii: the ministry of John the 
Baptist, the “ anointing ” of Jesus with the Holy 


PAUL AND JOHN 115 

Spirit, his teaching and works of mercy and 
power in Galilee; his ministry in Judea and 
Jerusalem, his arrest and trial before Pilate, his 
crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. 

The close affinity of the Fourth Gospel with 
the apostolic preaching will become plainer if we 
attempt an analysis of it somewhat on the lines of 
our analysis of Mark. 

The theme of “ fulfillment,” which in Mark is 
represented by the citations of prophecy with 
which the gospel begins, is in John represented 
by the logos doctrine of the prologue. What¬ 
ever else the Johannine logos may be, it is on one 
side of it the Word of the Lord, by which the 
heavens were made; which in the prophets came 
to his own, and his own received it not. The 
prologue represents this Word of the Lord as 
the light which, shining in the darkness, stage by 
stage grows in intensity to the point at which 
all its rays are focused on one spot of blinding 
glory in the incarnation. For the background 
of the idea we might cite such prophetic passages 
as that in Isaiah which speaks of the ideal Israel 
of the future: “ The Lord shall be unto thee an 


116 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


everlasting light, and thy God thy glory” 
(lx. 19). The same symbolism recurs every¬ 
where in the apocalypses. It is not simply that 
the prophets spoke words which now at last 
found their verification in the great divine event. 
It is that this event is the emergence into full 
operation of that very Word which in past his¬ 
tory struggled for utterance. This is surely a 
more profound rendering of the idea of the ful¬ 
fillment of prophecy. 

The evangelist next records, in traditional 
manner, the ministry of John the Baptist. His 
function, as in Mark, is to bear testimony to the 
coming of the Messiah, and in particular to the 
fact that the Messiah will “ baptize with Holy 
Spirit.” In order to do this the Messiah is, again 
as in Mark, himself “ anointed ” with Holy Spirit. 
To this also the Baptist bears witness. The theme 
of the testimony to Christ is here expanded by 
the addition of several further witnesses, who 
apply to him the traditional eschatological title 
— Messiah, Son of God, King of Israel. At last 
Jesus himself speaks, and claims for himself, as in 


PAUL AND JOHN 117 

Mark, the most mysterious and august of all these 
titles, “ Son of Man ” (i. 51). 

There now follow, as in Mark, stories of the 
miracles of Jesus, accompanied by discourses 
which explain their meaning in the light of the 
Johannine “ sublimated eschatology.” The mira¬ 
cle of Cana speaks of the coming of that new 
order which is to the old as wine to water. The 
cleansing of the temple foreshadows the new 
temple which is the body of Christ (ii. 21). In 
the healings at Cana and Bethesda, Christ gives 
life, as in the healing of the blind at Siloam he 
gives light. In the feeding of the multitude the 
bread is interpreted by the help of the symbol of 
the manna, which had in Jewish tradition come 
to stand for the spiritual food of the age to come. 
Christ is in fact giving to the world the u real 
bread,” which conveys eternal life. That the 
bread is himself is agreeable to the experience of 
the church that in the “ communion of the Holy 
Spirit,” which constituted the new life, it enjoyed 
the presence of the Lord. 

The record is interspersed with sayings which 


118 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


emphasize the truth that in this historical ministry 
of Jesus “ the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of 
God has drawn near.” Thus, “ Do you not say, 
Four months, and then the harvest comes? [The 
harvest is an old prophetic symbol.] I say to you, 
lift up your eyes and behold the fields: they are 
already white for harvest” (iv. 35). Again, 
“The hour is coming, and now is, when true 
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and 
in truth ” (iv. 23). “ The hour is coming, and 
now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the 
Son of God, and those who hear will come to 
life” (v. 25). And this latter saying receives 
illustration on the grand scale in the story of 
the raising of Lazarus, which exhibits Christ as 
“ the resurrection and the life,” through whom 
eternal life is a present possession and no longer 
a hope for the “ last day.” 

Like Mark again, John traces in the ministry 
that growing opposition to Jesus which led to his 
death. But he gives to it a more profound in¬ 
terpretation. Since with Christ the eternal light 
has come into the world, to sin against the light 
is to be judged. And this is in fact the “last 


PAUL AND JOHN 119 

judgment ” of which prophecy and apocalypse 
spoke, and which, if the coming of Christ is in¬ 
deed the fulfillment of prophecy, must have 
taken place when he came. “ This is the judg¬ 
ment: that the Light has come into the world, 
and men loved darkness rather than light ” (iii. 
19). Hence, when the opposition has reached its 
height, and Jesus stands in prospect of death, he 
can declare, “ Now is the judgment of this world; 
now is the prince of this world cast out ” (xii. 
31). It is a more pointed and even more logical 
statement of the Pauline doctrine that in the 
death of Jesus God condemned sin in the flesh 
and triumphed over principalities and powers. 
The eschatological idea of judgment has received 
a conclusive reinterpretation. 

As we approach the narrative of the passion, 
the place of the apocalyptic discourse in Mark 
is taken by the discourse in the upper room. In 
this discourse, as we have seen, the prediction of 
the second advent of Christ is interpreted in the 
sense of his presence in the church through his 
Spirit. The passion itself is set forth as the event 
in which Christ is more fully “ glorified ” than 


izo THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

in any of his words or works (xii. 23-33), be¬ 
cause on the one hand it is the most complete 
revelation of his love for his friends, and on the 
other hand it is, as the kerygma had insisted from 
an early date, the means by which he finally 
effected the salvation of man. “ For their sakes 
I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified 
in reality ” (xvii. 19). In these words the “ holi¬ 
ness,” that is, the supernatural character, of the 
messianic community is directly related to the 
saving fact of the death of Christ. The last 
words of his earthly life are, “It is finished” 
(xix. 30). They are an impressive statement of 
the conviction that in the life and death of Jesus 
the whole counsel of God is fulfilled, as the es¬ 
chatological valuation of these facts had implied 
from the beginning. 

Finally, the resurrection is recorded, as in the 
other Gospels, and in agreement with the form 
of the kerygma. But in the Fourth Gospel it is 
not so much a new act in the drama of redemp¬ 
tion, for the victory of Christ is already complete, 
and his glory already manifested in his life and 
death. It is narrated as the sign which seals for 


PAUL AND JOHN 121 

the disciples the reality of that which he has 
accomplished, and the finality of his person: 
“ Thomas said, My Lord and my God! ” 
(xx. 28). 

In this profound restatement of the apostolic 
preaching the Fourth Evangelist has succeeded 
in bringing into one picture those elements 
which in its earlier forms appear as past, present, 
and future. On the one hand all that the church 
hoped for in the second coming of Christ is al¬ 
ready given in its present experience of Christ 
through the Spirit; and on the other hand this 
present experience penetrates the record of the 
events that brought it into being, and reveals 
their deepest significance. “The Word was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld 
his glory.’’ All the sense of finality that eschatol¬ 
ogy strove to express is in that amazing declara¬ 
tion, which is at once a comprehensive summary 
of the life of Jesus, and contains in itself all that 
the highest hopes of man can aspire to; for 
beyond the vision of God we cannot aspire. 

The work of Paul and John represents the 
most significant and far-reaching developments 


i22 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


of the apostolic preaching in the New Testament. 
As we have seen, their writings, as well as those 
of other New Testament writers, betray a direct 
acquaintance with the traditional forms of the 
kerygma. We could not otherwise account for 
the way in which they all make use of certain 
guiding ideas, and even certain arrangements of 
these ideas, and formulas for expressing them. 
The primitive kerygma lived on. 

As the church produced a settled organization 
of its life, the content of the kerygma entered 
into the Rule of Faith which is recognized by the 
theologians of the second and third centuries as 
the presupposition of Christian theology. Out 
of the Rule of Faith in turn the creeds emerged. 
The so-called Apostles’ Creed in particular still 
betrays in its form and language its direct descent 
from the primitive apostolic preaching. 

At the same time, the kerygma exerted a con¬ 
trolling influence upon the shaping of the liturgy. 
While theology advanced from the positions 
established by Paul and John, the form and 
language of the church’s worship adhered more 
closely to the forms of the kerygma . It is perhaps 


PAUL AND JOHN 123 

in some parts of the great liturgies of the church 
that we are still in most direct contact with the 
original apostolic preaching. 

In this survey of the apostolic preaching and 
its developments two facts have come into view: 
first, that within the New Testament there is an 
immense range of variety in the interpretation 
that is given to the kerygma; and second, that in 
all such interpretation the essential elements of 
the original kerygma are steadily kept in view. 
Indeed, the further we move from the primitive 
modes of expression, the more decisively is the 
central purport of it affirmed. With all the 
diversity of the New Testament writings, they 
form a unity in their proclamation of the one 
gospel. At a former stage of criticism, the study 
of the New Testament was vitalized by the 
recognition of the individuality of its various 
writers and their teachings. The results of this 
analytical stage of criticism are of permanent 
value. With these results in mind, we can now 
do fuller justice to the rich many-sidedness of the 
central gospel which is expressed in the whole. 


I2 4 THE apostolic preaching 

The present task of New Testament criticism, as 
it seems to me, is the task of synthesis. Perhaps, 
however, “ synthesis ” is not quite the right word, 
for it may imply the creation of unity out of 
originally diverse elements. But in the New 
Testament the unity is original. We have to 
explore, by a comparative study of the several 
writings, the common faith which evoked them, 
and which they aimed at interpreting to an ever 
widening public. 

It is this task which I have tried to plot out in 
these lectures. It should be evident that there 
is room for a great deal of investigation at every 
point. Work which has been done during the 
present century, and particularly since the World 
War, has provided us with fresh standpoints and 
with fresh illustrative material. There are new 
methods of gospel criticism, and there is an almost 
bewildering mass of material supplied by the 
comparative study of religion in and about the 
New Testament period, from Jewish, Hellen¬ 
istic, and Oriental sources. Indeed, it has some¬ 
times seemed as if the study of Pauline and 
Johannine thought, in particular, might resolve 


PAUL AND JOHN 125 

itself into a study of religious eclecticism. But 
as we master this mass of material, instead of 
being mastered by it, it will enable us to define 
more precisely the meaning of the terms em¬ 
ployed by these teachers, and I am convinced that 
the result will be to bring into more startlingly 
clear relief the fundamental Christian message 
which Paul and John proclaim in fresh and in¬ 
vigorating forms. 

There is one further part of the task, to which 
in these lectures I have done no more than allude, 
and that is, to ascertain the relation between the 
apostolic preaching and that of Jesus Christ him¬ 
self. I have said something about it elsewhere. 17 
I will here only state my belief that it will be 
found that the primitive kerygma arises directly 
out of the teaching of Jesus about the kingdom 
of God and all that hangs upon it; but that it 
does only partial justice to the range and depth 
of his teaching, and needs the Pauline and Johan- 
nine interpretations before it fully rises to the 
height of the great argument. It is in the Fourth 
Gospel, which in form and expression, as prob- 

17 In The Parables of the Kingdom (London, Nisbet, 1935). 


126 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

ably in date, stands farthest from the original 
tradition of the teaching, that we have the most 
penetrating exposition of its central meaning. 

In conclusion, I would offer some brief reflec¬ 
tions upon the relation of this discussion to the 
preaching of Christianity in our own time. 

What do we mean by “ preaching the 
gospel ”? At various times and in different 
circles the gospel has been identified with this 
or that element in the general complex of ideas 
broadly called Christian; with the promise of 
immortality, with a particular theory of the 
atonement, with the idea of “ the fatherhood of 
God and the brotherhood of man,” and so forth. 
What the gospel was, historically speaking, at the 
beginning and during the New Testament period, 
I hope these lectures have in some measure de¬ 
fined. No Christian of the first century had any 
doubt of what it was, or any doubt of its 
relevance to human need. How far can it be 
preached in the twentieth century? 

A well known New Testament scholar has 
expressed the opinion that “the modern man 


PAUL AND JOHN 127 

does not believe in any form of salvation known 
to ancient Christianity.” 18 It is indeed clear 
that the primitive formulation of the gospel in 
eschatological terms is as strange as it could well 
be to our minds. It is no wonder that it has 
stirred up much controversy and taken a long 
time to reach the frank conclusion that the 
preaching of the early church, and of Jesus him¬ 
self, had its being in this strange world of 
thought. For many years we strove against this 
conclusion. We tried to believe that criticism 
could prune away from the New Testament 
those elements in it which seemed to us fantastic, 
and leave us with an original “ essence of Christi¬ 
anity,” to which the modern man could say, 
“ This is what I have always thought.” But the 
attempt has failed. At the center of it all lies 
this alien, eschatological gospel, completely out 
of touch, as it seems, with our ways of thought. 

But perhaps it was not much less out of touch 
with the thought of the Hellenistic world to 
which the earliest missionaries appealed. Paul 
at least found that the gospel had in it an element 

18 Kirsopp Lake, Landmarks of Early Christianity , p. 77. 


128 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

of “ foolishness ” and “ scandal ” for his public. 
But he and others succeeded in reinterpreting it 
to their contemporaries in terms which made its 
essential relevance and truth clear to their minds. 
It is this process of reinterpretation that we have 
been studying. Some similar process is clearly 
demanded of the preachers of the gospel in our 
time. If the primitive “ eschatological ” gospel is 
remote from our thought, there is much in Paul 
and John which, as it stands, is almost equally 
remote, and their reinterpretations, profound 
and conclusive though they are, do not absolve 
us from our task. 

But the attempt at reinterpretation is always 
in danger of becoming something quite different: 
that which Paul called “ preaching another Jesus 
and another gospel.” 19 We have seen that the 
great thinkers of the New Testament period, 
while they worked out bold, even daring, ways 
of restating the original gospel, were so possessed 
by its fundamental convictions that their re¬ 
statements are true to its first intention. Under 
all variations of form, they continued to affirm 

19 2 Cor. xi. 4, Gal. i. 6. 


PAUL AND JOHN 129 

that in the events out of which the Christian 
church arose there was a conclusive act of God, 
who in them visited and redeemed his people; and 
that in the corporate experience of the church 
itself there was revealed a new quality of life, 
arising out of what God had done, which in turn 
corroborated the value set upon the facts. 

The real problem for the student of the New 
Testament is not whether this or that incident 
in the life of Jesus is credibly reported, this or 
that saying rightly attributed to him; nor yet 
whether such and such a doctrine in Paul or John 
can be derived from Judaism or the “mystery 
religions.” It is instead whether the fundamental 
affirmations of the apostolic preaching are true 
and relevant. We cannot answer this question 
without understanding the preaching, nor under¬ 
stand it without painstaking study of material 
which in some of its forms is strange and elusive; 
but without answering this question, we cannot 
confidently claim the name of Christian for that 
which we preach. To select from the New 
Testament certain passages which seem to have 
a “modern” ring, and to declare that these 


130 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

represent the “ permanent element ” in it, is not 
necessarily to preach the gospel. It is, moreover, 
easy to be mistaken, on a superficial reading, 
about the true meaning of passages which may 
strike us as congenial. Some of them may not 
be as “ modern ” as they sound. The discipline 
of confronting the gospel of primitive Christi¬ 
anity, in those forms of statement which are least 
congenial to the modern mind, compels us to re¬ 
think, not only the gospel, but our own pre¬ 
possessions. 

It is for this reason that I conceive the study of 
the New Testament, from the standpoint I have 
indicated, to be of extreme importance just now. 
I do not suggest that the crude, early formulation 
of the gospel is our exclusive standard. It is only 
in the light of its development all through the 
New Testament that we learn how much is 
implied in it. But I would urge that the study 
of the Synoptic Gospels should be more than an 
exercise in the historical critic’s art of fixing the 
irreducible minimum of bare fact in the record; 
and that the study of Paul and John should be 
more than either a problem in comparative re- 


PAUL AND JOHN 131 

ligion or the first chapter in a history of dogma. 
Gospels and epistles alike offer a field of study 
in which the labor of criticism and interpretation 
may initiate us into the “ many-sided wisdom ” 
which was contained in the apostolic preaching, 
and make us free to declare it in contemporary 
terms to our own age. 




I 




ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 



























APPENDIX 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 



JLhose writings of the Old Testament which 
we are accustomed to call the historical books 
are in the Jewish canon reckoned among the 
prophets; and rightly so. One of the direct re¬ 
sults of the work of the prophets of the eighth and 
seventh centuries b.c. was an outburst of his¬ 
torical composition. Other Oriental peoples had 
for a long time produced chronicles — which 
have a high value as a record of events. But the 
corpus of historical writings which runs from the 
Book of Joshua to the second Book of Kings, 
and indeed includes also the narrative parts of 
the Pentateuch, is something different from a 


136 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

chronicle of events. It exhibits history as a unity, 
with a meaning which makes sense of all its parts. 
As Dr. Clement Webb has recently put it, “ The 
‘historical element’ in the Old Testament is 
already, in intention and profession, not a mere 
collection of stories, but a history of the world, 
although no doubt a history of the world told 
from a special point of view and with a practical 
intent .” 1 

The principle which gives unity and meaning 
to the whole is the idea of the moral government 
of the world by a divine providence which mani¬ 
fests itself in divers parts and divers manners in 
the successive episodes of the experience of the 
people of God, and is working toward the ful¬ 
fillment of a divine purpose. 

But while recorded history is the field within 
which the divine purpose is being worked out, it 
can never be said, in the prophetic view, that 
recorded history fully reveals the purpose of 
God. This revelation will not be given until 
the last term in the historical series has come into 

1 The Historical Element in Religion (London, Allen & 
Unwin, 1935), pp. 39-40. 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 137 

view — the day of the Lord. It is only prophetic 
foresight of the day of the Lord that makes it 
possible to see the whole of history as divinely 
governed. It seems probable that the idea of the 
day of the Lord is a part of primitive Hebrew 
mythology. Certainly it is older than the earliest 
of the prophets whose works we possess. But 
if so, we must suppose that in popular mythology 
the idea stood for an unconditioned and unre¬ 
lated catastrophe, supervening incalculably upon 
the course of history. The prophets strenuously 
endeavored to give to the idea an ethical and 
rational meaning by relating it to the course of 
events in the past and to the tendencies of the 
present. It was thus not simply one more de¬ 
tached event, though of a different order, but 
the consummation of the whole series of events. 

To prophecy succeeded apocalypse. It works 
with the prophetic scheme of history, but with 
certain differences. In particular, it virtually 
gives up the attempt to recognize divine meaning 
in the present. The mighty hand of the Lord 
is to be seen in events of the remote past, and 
will again be seen in the future, but in the present 


138 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

the power of evil obscures it. This does not 
mean that events have escaped the divine con¬ 
trol. “ The Most High ruleth in the kingdom 
of men,” but his rule is hidden. This change 
of perspective, which can be sufficiently ac¬ 
counted for by the prolonged subjection and 
sufferings of the faithful, serves to give greater 
emphasis to the belief, which, as we have seen, 
was also the belief of the prophets, that only in 
the day of the Lord will the divine meaning and 
purpose of history come to light. 

At the same time, the radical contrast of “ this 
age ” and “ the age to come,” which now begins 
to be expressed, serves to bring out the supra- 
historical character of the day of the Lord. If 
on one side it is an event — the last term in the 
series of events — on the other side it is not an 
event in history at all, for it is described in terms 
which remove it from the conditions of time 
and space. In one sense this is no doubt a re¬ 
version to the pre-prophetic mythology; but 
again it brings into bold relief an essential char¬ 
acter of the idea, which it bears even in the 
prophets. The eschaton , even though it may be 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 139 

conceived in terms of the devastation of Israel 
by Assyria, or, again, of a glorious return of 
Judah from Babylonian exile, is never simply 
one event following upon another, as the giving 
of the Law followed upon the exodus, or the 
return upon the Babylonian captivity, only with 
the difference that no further event will follow 
upon it in turn. It is such that no other event 
either could follow or need follow upon it, 
because in it the whole purpose of God is revealed 
and fulfilled. 

In prophecy and apocalypse alike, the divine 
event, the es chat on, is always “ round the 
corner.” The prophet never conceives himself 
as standing midway in the course of history, 
surveying the past through its centuries of 
change, and foreseeing the future through a 
similar series of changes. It is not true that 
either prophets or apocalyptists write, in this 
sense, “ reversed history,” or an imaginary narra¬ 
tive of a future course of events, like Mr. Shaw 
or Mr. Wells. 

The idea that they do so is an illusion based 
upon two facts. First, later exegesis found the 


i 4 o THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

“ fulfillment ” of prophecy in a series of events, 
often covering a long span of time. Although 
we have disavowed such exegesis, its ghost may 
still haunt us. Second, the apocalypses are fre¬ 
quently attributed to personages who lived long 
before the actual composition of the books, and 
who are represented as surveying the actual 
course of history through centuries, in the guise 
of predictions. Although we recognize the 
fiction for what it is, it is not easy wholly to 
escape its effects on the mind. 

Actually the prophet foresees one thing only, 
the day of the Lord, the esc baton. This state¬ 
ment needs to be qualified only so far: that some 
prophets or apocalyptists emphasize the nearness 
in time of the eschaton by giving a turn to con¬ 
temporary events, such that they melt, after a 
brief development, into the mythical or super¬ 
natural traits of the day of the Lord. In the 
eschaton is concentrated the whole meaning 
which, if history were to go on, might be dif¬ 
fused throughout a long process. In this sense 
the prophetic view may be said to “fore¬ 
shorten ” history; for so it appears to us, who 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 141 

know that many centuries elapsed after the 
debacle of Judah in 586 b.c., or the Seleucid 
persecution of 168 b.c., which were the im¬ 
mediate prelude to the End for Jeremiah and for 
the author of Daniel respectively. 

In reality time measurement is irrelevant here. 
An absolute end to history, whether it be con¬ 
ceived as coming soon or late, is no more than 
a fiction designed to express the reality of tele¬ 
ology within history. If the maxim, Die Welt - 
geschichte ist das Weltgericht, is to be maintained 
in its full sense, then there must somehow be in 
history an element of finality. If, as Solon said, 
a man may not be pronounced happy until he is 
dead, or as Aristotle put it, happiness can be pred¬ 
icated only of a “ complete life,” then similarly 
the significance of history can be estimated only 
when history is over and can be looked at as a 
closed whole. It is this that is symbolized in the 
myth of the last judgment, the end of the world. 
Since no man has ever experienced the end of 
history, it can be expressed only in the form of 
fantasy. 

When our modern apocalyptists set forth the 


i 4 2 the apostolic preaching 

shape of things to come, their imaginative skill 
is used to produce a fictitious narrative which 
looks so like history as we know it that we almost 
forget that it has no closer relation to actuality 
than the vision of Jewish apocalyptists. The 
form of forecasting a process rather than a single 
event laden with meaning does not alter the fact 
that we are dealing with symbol and not with 
actuality in the one case as in the other. The time 
scale is irrelevant to that which has never re¬ 
ceived embodiment in the forms of time and 
space and therefore has no existence in the 
temporal order. Where the prophets chiefly 
differ from our modern writers about the future 
is not so much in predicting an early end of the 
world, but in clothing the coming event in forms 
which do not properly belong to time at all, but 
to eternity. They thereby imply that the tele¬ 
ology of history is not purely immanent, but is 
determined by the purpose of a God who tran¬ 
scends the temporal order. 

We may now consider more closely the 
character attributed to the day of the Lord. 

It is in the first place supernatural. Not, 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 143 

indeed, that the supernatural factor is absent 
from any part of history, for in the prophetic 
view all history is the field of divine action. But 
the esc hat on is manifestly supernatural. The 
hidden rule of God in history is revealed. “ Then 
his kingdom shall appear throughout all his 
creation ” (Assumption of Moses, x. 1). After 
long centuries of waiting, mankind shall see the 
glory of the Lord. 

Second, since the will of God is absolute right, 
the day of the Lord will be marked by the over¬ 
throw of the powers of evil, and judgment upon 
the sins of men. 

Third, since the will of God for man is per¬ 
fection of life in his image and in fellowship 
with him, the day of the Lord will bring to 
those in whom his will is fulfilled a new life 
which is both glorious and endless. 

In all these respects, the day of the Lord is the 
“ fulfillment ” of history. While it belongs, in 
the last resort, to the realm of the “wholly 
other,” it is nevertheless not something alien and 
unrelated to the recorded course of events. For 
history depends for its meaning and reality upon 


i 4 4 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

that which is other than history. The real, in¬ 
ward, and eternal meaning, striving for expres¬ 
sion in the course of history, is completely 
expressed in the eschaton , which is therefore 
organically related to history. Nevertheless, 
it is unique and unlike any other event, because 
it is final. It is not as though the Creator had 
arbitrarily fixed a certain date as the “ zero hour ” 
of his world, so that events which might con¬ 
ceivably have followed it are not permitted to 
happen. It is such that nothing more could 
happen in history, because the eternal meaning 
which gives reality to history is now exhausted. 
To conceive any further event on the plane of 
history would be like drawing a check on a closed 
account. 

At the same time the day of the Lord is not the 
end of things in the sense that it negates the 
values inherent in history, so that it might be 
conceived as a kind of nirvana or holy nothing¬ 
ness in which the illusions of the time process are 
finally laid to rest. On the contrary, the values 
implicit in history are here fully affirmed. They 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 145 

are not destroyed but sublimated. The day of 
the Lord brings with it new heavens and a new 
earth, and transforms human nature into the 
likeness of “the angels of God.” Thus the 
eschaton , or ultimate, is also a beginning. It is 
the end of history, but the beginning of the “ age 
to come,” which is not history but the pure real¬ 
ization of those values which our empirical life in 
time partly affirms and partly seems to deny. 
Inevitably, the only way in which this can be 
described is in imagery of a sensuous type, which 
often gives the appearance of being a crude 
materialism. For example, one of the most com¬ 
mon images is that of the heavenly banquet. But 
some at least of the apocalyptists surely knew 
that the kingdom of God is not eating and drink¬ 
ing, but righteousness, peace, and joy; that is, it 
is the pure reality which we partly apprehend 
in the most exalted moments of our human 
experience in time. 

In the New Testament the apocalyptic 
symbolism of the Old recurs freely, but with a 
profound difference. The divine event is de- 


146 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

dared to have happened. Consider the follow¬ 
ing propositions, taken from all parts of the New 
Testament: 

“ The kingdom of God has come upon you ” 
(Matt. xii. 28). 

“This is that which was spoken by the 
prophet” (Actsii. 16). 

“ If any man is in Christ, there is a new cre¬ 
ation ” (2 Cor. v. 17). 

“ He has rescued us out of the dominion of 
darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of 
the Son of his Love ” (Col. i. 13). 

“We are being transfigured from glory to 
glory ” (2 Cor. iii. 18). 

“ He has saved us by the washing of rebirth and 
the renewal of the Holy Spirit ” (Titus iii. 5). 

“ Having tasted the powers of the age to 
come ” (Heb. vi. 5). 

“ Born again, not of corruptible seed, but of 
incorruptible” (1 Peter i. 23). 

“The darkness is passing, and the real light 
is already shining ... it is the last hour” 
(1 John ii. 8). 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 147 

From these and many similar passages it is 
surely clear that, for the New Testament writers 
in general, the eschaton has entered history; the 
hidden rule of God has been revealed; the age 
to come has come. The gospel of primitive 
Christianity is a gospel of realized eschatology. 

In other words, a particular historical crisis, 
constituted by the ministry, the death, and the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ, is interpreted in 
terms of a mythological concept, which had been 
made by the prophets into a sublime symbol for 
the divine meaning and purpose of history in its 
fullness. The characteristics of the day of the 
Lord as described in prophecy and apocalypse 
are boldly transferred to the historical crisis. 

First, it is fulfillment. “ The time is fulfilled ” 
is the declaration which Mark inscribes over the 
whole gospel record. Similarly, Paul declares, 
“ When the fullness of time had come, God sent 
forth his Son.” The frequent appeals to the 
fulfillment of prophecy, which the modem 
reader is likely to find tedious and unconvincing, 
are a piecemeal assertion of the one great fact that 
the meaning of history is now summed up. We 


148 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

mistake them if we suppose that the writers 
would have been equally interested in any pre¬ 
diction of any casual event which happened to be 
fulfilled. That which the prophets foresaw was 
the day of the Lord, and that alone. The ful¬ 
fillment of prophecy means that the day has 
dawned. 

Second, the supernatural has manifestly 
entered history. The arm of the Lord is made 
bare. “ The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are 
cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised, 
and to the poor good tidings are proclaimed.” 
The miracle stories of the Gospels correspond 
closely with the symbols which the prophets had 
used to depict the supernatural character of the 
age to come. They may be regarded, once again, 
as a piecemeal assertion of the one great fact that 
with the appearance of Christ the age of miracle 
arrived. 2 The story of his ministry is told as a 
realized apocalypse. 

Third, this open manifestation of the power 
of God is the overthrow of the powers of evil. 

2 See my article, “Miracles in the Gospels,” Expository 
Times, Vol. XLIV, no. n, pp. 504 ff. 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 149 

“ If I by the finger of God cast out demons, then 
the kingdom of God has come upon you,” says 
Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. The Christ of the 
Fourth Gospel, on the eve of his death, declares, 
“Now is the prince of this world cast out.” 
Paul says that in the cross God triumphed over 
principalities and powers. The theme recurs in 
other parts of the New Testament. 

Fourth, this is the judgment of the world. In 
the death of Christ, says Paul, God manifested his 
righteousness and condemned sin in the flesh. 
“This [according to the Fourth Gospel] is the 
judgment, that the Light has come into the world 
[with the incarnation of the Word], and men 
loved darkness rather than light.” 

Finally, eternal life, the “life of the age to 
come,” is now realized in experience. Christ is 
risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that 
sleep, and we are raised with him in newness of 
life. He who believes has life eternal. 

I have done no more than offer a few pointers 
toward a conclusion which must be clear to all 
who study the New Testament with the language 
and ideas of Jewish eschatology in mind —the 


150 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

conclusion that the writers have deliberately, 
boldly, and consistently applied those ideas and 
that language to the facts of the ministry, the 
death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The 
implication is that in those facts all that 
the prophets meant by the day of the Lord is 
realized. There is here a divine event, unique 
and decisive, in which the whole purpose of God 
in history is made manifest. 

Naturally, when a conception hitherto belong¬ 
ing to the realm of mythology is declared to be 
realized in history, it is itself remolded by the 
facts. How far the fantastic imagery of apoca¬ 
lyptic was taken literally by its authors or readers 
it will perhaps always remain impossible to say. 
But when that imagery is applied to actual facts 
its symbolic character becomes plain and some 
elements in it are tacitly dropped as inappropriate. 
Thus the apocalyptic picture of the darkening of 
the sun and the collapse of the material universe 
is not taken up, except in the greatly reduced 
form of a supernatural darkness and an earth¬ 
quake, represented as accompanying the cruci¬ 
fixion and resurrection of the Lord; and the 
clouds upon which the Messiah was to descend 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 151 

to judgment appear only as a subordinate element 
in the scenes of the transfiguration and the 
ascension. But when all allowance is made, it 
remains true that the New Testament writers 
intend with full seriousness to represent the 
coming of Christ as the unique divine event to 
which prophecy and apocalyptic referred. 

One change necessarily follows when the 
divine event passes from the realm of mythology 
to the realm of history. While its character of 
finality remains, in the sense that it is decisive, it 
can no longer be final in the sense that nothing 
can happen after it. For it is in the nature of our 
time experience that it cannot be bounded either 
before or after. It is, indeed, in this sense that 
time is, as Plato said, the “ moving image of 
eternity.” Hence, any event within history, 
forming part of the time series, must be followed 
by other events. And so the coming of Christ 
was followed by a further historical period. But 
the New Testament writers are clear that history 
is henceforward qualitatively different from 
what it was before Christ’s coming. 

Indeed, they exploit that aspect of the day of 
the Lord in which it was not only the eschaton. 


i 5 2 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

regarded from the point of view of previous 
history, but also the beginning of a new order, 
superior to the historical. Paul goes so far as to 
say that in Christ we are dead to the world, that 
is to say, to the historical order, and that God 
has raised us together with Christ and made us 
to reside with him in the heavenly places. True, 
this new life is secret. On the empirical plane we 
still live the earthly life; but though we live “ in 
the flesh,” we no longer live “ after the flesh.” 
“ You are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in 
God” (Col. iii. 3). Thus no conception of 
Christianity as a religion is fully true to the New 
Testament which does not recognize that the 
“ Christian era,” as we call it, marks an abrupt 
break in the relation in which the people of God, 
and, indeed, the whole human race, stands to the 
historical order. 

For the end of the world was long ago, 

And we all dwell today 
As children of some second birth, 

Like a strange people left on earth 
After a judgment day. 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 153 

This view of the historical status of the events 
comprised in the coming of Christ introduces us 
at once to what Professor Gerhard Kittel, in 
Mysterium Christi , calls “ das Argernis der 
Eimrialigkeit ,” “the scandal of particularity.” 
How can we now take seriously a view which 
selects one particular episode in history and de¬ 
clares that it possesses an absolute and final 
quality distinguishing it from all other events? 

Now with particularity, as such, many his¬ 
torians have no quarrel — those at least who with 
Troeltsch regard their science as “ idiographic ” 
rather than “ nomothetic.” Mr. H. G. Wood, 
in his recent Hulsean Lectures, Christianity and 
the Nature of History , distinguishes the two 
types of science thus: 

The one concerned with the discovery of 
fruitful general principles, the other with 
the appreciation of particulars whose nature 
cannot be fully explained by general laws; 
the one interested in particular facts for the 
sake of discovering the general laws, the 
other interested in general laws for the sake 


i 5 4 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

of appreciating individuality and value; 
the one concerned with the phenomena 
of repetition, the other with the unique 
and non-repeatable elements of experience; 
the one best represented by physics, and 
the other best represented by history. 
[P. xxxvii] 

Mr. Wood goes on to argue that the specific 
character of the particular events which are the 
subject of history is that they are “ productive 
of significant change.’’ Of an event which is 
“ historic ” in the full sense one must be able to 
say: “First, this having happened, things can 
never be the same again. We cannot revert to 
the status quo ante . Second, this having hap¬ 
pened, it never can happen again. No exact 
repetition is desirable or even possible ” (p. 11). 

If we take this view of history, as against the 
“evolutionary” view, then there is no longer 
any objection in principle to the doctrine that 
the coming of Christ is in the highest degree such 
a “ historic ” event, unrepeatable and productive 
of significant change. But the Christian claim 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 155 

seems to go beyond this. It is that this episode in 
history is unique in a sense which is not, and 
could not, be true of any other event. “ Once 
for all at the consummation of the ages he was 
manifested” (Heb. ix. 26). Such a statement 
cannot, of course, be regarded as a scientific 
induction from observed facts. It is of the nature 
of a religious intuition or act of faith. Never¬ 
theless, it may be that such an intuition does 
after all provide the clue to the meaning of his- 
tory. 

I shall here refer to an already famous passage 
in the first volume of Professor Arnold Toyn¬ 
bee’s massive Study of History . 3 The author is 
seeking for an adequate cause for the rise of 
civilization. After investigating the evolutionary 
factors of race and environment, he pronounces 
that he has “ drawn a blank.” One discovery 
only has emerged — “ The cause of civilizations 
is not simple but multiple; it is not an entity but 
a relation. We have the choice,” he proceeds, 
“ of conceiving this relation either as an inter¬ 
action between two inhuman forces ... or as 

3 The passage to which I refer is in Vol. I, pp. 271 ff. 


156 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

an encounter between two superhuman per¬ 
sonalities.” He chooses the latter alternative, 
following Plato’s lead and turning from the 
formulas of science to mythology. He observes: 

An encounter between two superhuman 
personalities is the plot of some of the 
greatest stories and dramas that the human 
imagination has conceived. An encounter 
between Yahweh and the serpent is the plot 
of the story of the fall of man in the Book of 
Genesis; a second encounter between the 
same antagonists . . . is the plot of the New 
Testament, which tells the story of the re¬ 
demption; an encounter between the Lord 
and Satan is the plot of the Book of Job; an 
encounter between the Lord and Mephis- 
topheles is the plot of Goethe’s Faust; an 
encounter between gods and demons is the 
plot of the Scandinavian Voluspa; an en¬ 
counter between Artemis and Aphrodite is 
the plot of Euripides’ Hippolytus. 

The theme of the plot, Professor Toynbee 
shows, is in all cases covered by the formula 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 157 

“challenge and response,” and this formula 
furnishes him with the desired clue to the rise 
of civilizations. With this aspect of the matter 
we are not at present concerned. But we must 
observe that this great encounter is in most cases 
(he says in all cases, but I do not think this is 
strictly true) conceived as a unique event. In 
particular, “ in the New Testament the unique¬ 
ness of the divine event is of the essence of the 
story; and this has been a stumbling block to the 
Western intellect ever since the geocentric con¬ 
ception of the material universe was first im¬ 
pugned by the discoveries of our modern 
Western astronomy.” But by an appeal to Sir 
James Jeans’ theory of the origin of the planetary 
system he deftly turns the flank of the astro¬ 
nomical attack: “ In this portrayal of the 
encounter between two stars which is supposed 
to have led to the appearance of life on earth, the 
rarity and the momentousness of the event turn 
out to be almost as much of the essence of the 
story as they are in the Book of Genesis and in 
the New Testament.” Thus the “scandal of 
particularity ” is not avoided by modern science 
any more than by Christian theology. 


158 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

In his application of the myth of the great 
encounter, Professor Toynbee abandons the idea 
of strict uniqueness, for he assumes that a specific 
episode of “ challenge and response ” led to the 
rise of each of the civilizations known to history. 
But if the universal myth is to be taken as testify¬ 
ing to a valid spiritual intuition of something 
deeply embedded in the structure of the universe, 
as he assumes, then it is significant that ideally 
it speaks of an absolutely unique event. In the 
history of civilizations the great encounter is not 
unique but extremely rare, but this rarity must 
be taken as what Plato might have called a 
“shadow” or “ image ” of the idea of uniqueness 
which is the ultimate reality in the case, as the 
virtue of a good man is only a shadow of the idea 
of the good. 

Christianity, however, as Professor Toynbee 
recognizes, holds to the strict uniqueness of the 
divine event. Further, the Christian form of the 
myth is the only one that even professes to have 
been embodied in a historical event —the only 
one, unless one should include the astronomical 
theory of the primeval assault upon the sun, out of 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 159 

which the planetary system and life itself 
emerged; for to the lay mind it is never quite clear 
whether the astronomers, like other physicists, 
suppose themselves to be describing actual facts, 
or to be offering a symbolic myth which helps 
us to visualize imaginatively the results of their 
mathematical calculations. In any case, Christi¬ 
anity insists that in the death of Jesus sub Pontio 
Pilato there took place a unique encounter 
between God and the powers of evil out of 
which a new kind of life for mankind emerged. 

In making this claim we are not, I think, 
altogether outside the scope of Professor Toyn¬ 
bee’s application of the myth. He holds that 
each civilization arose out of an episode of chal- 
lenge-and-response which for that civilization 
is unique and final in its results. It is not unique 
absolutely, only because civilization itself is not 
a single phenomenon but a multiple one. But in 
relation to any one particular civilization he 
postulates an event possessing the same qualities 
of uniqueness and finality which Christianity 
attributes to the coming of Christ. This event 
is so momentous, and in the last resort so mys- 


160 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


terious and so little to be accounted for by 
immanent evolutionary factors, that it cannot 
be adequately presented except in the mythical 
form of an encounter between superhuman 
personalities. And yet, be it observed, this event 
actually happened, at a date which can in most 
cases be fixed within a century or two. 

I suggest that if we are thinking not of civiliza¬ 
tions but of religion, the element of multiplicity 
may well disappear. Religions, indeed — that is 
to say, the forms and institutions in which they 
are embodied — are many, and may be included 
among the constituent factors in the various civi¬ 
lizations known to history. Religion, however, 
is one. Indeed, it may well turn out that the 
unity underlying all varieties of civilization can 
ultimately be expressed only in terms of religion, 
as the relation established between the human 
spirit and its total environment, material, physi¬ 
cal, and spiritual. (That there is such an ideal 
unity of civilization seems to be implied in Pro¬ 
fessor Toynbee’s argument about the “com¬ 
parability of facts,” and in his treatment of the 
several historical civilizations as species of a 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 161 

genus.) The Christian claim, then, implies that 
the clue to the meaning of history in its religious 
aspect lies in the historical episode of the coming 
of Christ, which can be adequately interpreted 
only as a drama of superhuman personalities, and 
is as such unique. 

While, however, the New Testament affirms 
with full seriousness that the great divine event 
has happened, there remains a residue of escha¬ 
tology which is not exhausted in the “ realized 
eschatology ” of the gospel, namely, the element 
of sheer finality. While history still goes on, 
a view of the world, which, like the prophetic 
and Christian view, insists that history is a unity, 
must necessarily represent it as having an end as 
well as a beginning, however impossible it may be 
for philosophy to admit the idea of finite time. 
Thus the idea of a second coming of Christ 
appears along with the emphatic assertion that 
his coming in history satisfies all the conditions 
of the eschatological event, except that of absolute 
finality. 

We must be clear just how much is implied in 
this idea. It would not be true to say that in the 


162 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


New Testament as a whole (whatever may be 
true of possible isolated passages) the ministry, 
death, and resurrection of Christ are regarded 
as merely provisional, or as anything short of 
the unique and absolute entrance of the kingdom 
of God, the esc hat on, into human experience. 
“ The Word was made flesh no more absolute 
relation of God to history than that can be 
conceived. 

The true nature of the geminus adventus of the 
Lord can best be studied in the sacrament of 
the eucharist, in which the spiritual conscious¬ 
ness of the church is most intense. The eucharist 
was from the beginning an eschatological sacra¬ 
ment, an anticipation of that heavenly banquet 
which was the august and mysterious symbol of 
the perfection of life in the age to come. Its 
eschatological character is most clearly and em¬ 
phatically preserved in the Eastern liturgies, 
though the Western liturgies (Roman and Angli¬ 
can) have not altogether missed it. It was also, 
from a very early date — at least from the time 
when Paul “ received ” the tradition which he 
“delivered” to the Corinthians in a.d. 50 — a 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 163 

commemoration of the death of the Lord “ under 
Pontius Pilate,” i.e. of the historical facts in 
which the church saw a “ realized eschatology.” 
It is in the focus of what Dr. Webb has called, 
in his recent book, the “ memory ” of the com¬ 
munity, by which the events of the past are 
attested as realities essential to its life. 4 At the 
same time it has been, again from the time of 
Paul at latest, and we may suppose from those 
early days in which “ he [Jesus] was known to 
them in the breaking of bread,” a sacrament of 
the very presence of Christ in and with his 
people. Past, present, and future are indissolubly 
united in the sacrament. It may be regarded 
as a dramatization of the advent of the Lord, 
which is at once his remembered coming in 
humiliation and his desired coming in glory, both 
realized in his true presence in the sacrament. 

In the eucharist, therefore, the church per¬ 
petually reconstitutes the crisis in which the 
kingdom of God came in history. It never gets 
beyond this. At each eucharist we are there — 
we are in the night in which he was betrayed, 

4 The Historical Element in Religion , pp. 84 ff. 


164 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 

at Golgotha, before the empty tomb on Easter 
day, and in the upper room where he appeared; 
and we are at the moment of his coming, with 
angels and archangels and all the company of 
heaven. Sacramental communion is not a purely 
mystical experience to which history, as em¬ 
bodied in the form and matter of the sacrament, 
would be in the last resort irrelevant; it is bound 
up with a corporate memory of real events. 
History has been taken up into the supra-histori- 
cal, without ceasing to be history. 

I believe that if we consider all that this implies, 
we are led some way towards a distinctively 
Christian conception of the nature of history. 

There are two opposing views of history 
which have been widely held by those who 
would think it “unscientific” to take account 
of the spiritual factor. History is either a chapter 
of accidents, or it is an evolutionary process. 
Religion can, in theory, come to terms with either 
view. If, as in some Eastern religions, the whole 
order of space and time is relegated to the sphere 
of illusion, then religion is well content to 
abandon history as at bottom senseless, and to 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 165 

turn to the eternal order in a “ flight of the alone 
to the Alone.” In the West, however, in recent 
times, an optimistic and idealistic type of religion 
has made terms with the evolutionary view 
of history. It has assumed that the direction of 
change in the process is of the nature of 
“progress,” and it has introduced the spiritual 
factor by a doctrine of immanence, according to 
which the supposed law of progress is identified 
with the activity of the divine Spirit. In its 
Christian form it has often attempted to re¬ 
interpret eschatology in terms of an evolutionary 
teleology. The kingdom of God is identified 
with a utopian goal of social evolution upon 
earth, and the magnificent affirmations of faith 
in its coming have been buttressed by a pro¬ 
fessedly scientific theory of the inevitability of 
progress. 

The evolutionary doctrine of progress has been 
the object of searching criticism in recent years. 
With it I will not concern myself here. But if 
the argument of this paper is sound, the theologi¬ 
cal form of that doctrine to which I have 
referred betrays a misconception of the nature 


166 THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING 


of Christian eschatology. The kingdom of God 
is not utopia. The gospel does not speak of 
“ progress,” but of dying and rising again. The 
pattern of history is revealed less in evolution 
than in crisis. Once in the course of the ages 
the spirit of man was confronted, within history, 
with the eternal God in his kingdom, power, 
and glory, and that in a final and absolute sense. 
There was a great encounter, a challenge and 
response, a death and resurrection; and divine 
judgment and life eternal came into human 
experience. 

By that supreme crisis the meaning of all his¬ 
tory is controlled. As it is reconstituted, by 
faith, in the experience of successive individuals 
and generations of mankind, the inward reality 
of history is revealed. The divine challenge 
reaches the soul of man. For his response to the 
challenge, positive or negative, and for its 
immediate consequences, he must bear responsi¬ 
bility for good or ill; and the nature of his re¬ 
sponse may shape the conditions of the next crisis. 
The whole course of history, however, remains 
plastic to the will of God. This world of things, 


ESCHATOLOGY AND HISTORY 167 

persons, and events can never forfeit, because 
of human sin, its one title to reality — namely, 
its fitness to mediate the call of God to man. 
For it has once been the field upon which the 
great encounter was fought to a decision, and it 
bears the mark of that encounter forever. 

Beyond the proximate effects of his choice the 
mind of man cannot foresee. He can never fore¬ 
cast the shape of things to come, except in 
symbolic myth. The true prophet always 
foreshortens the future, because he, of all men, 
discerns in history the eternal issues which lie 
within and yet beyond it . The least inadequate 
myth of the goal of history is that which molds 
itself upon the great divine event of the past, 
known in its concrete actuality, and depicts its 
final issue in a form which brings time to an end 
and places man in eternity — the second coming 
of the Lord, the last judgment. 


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